


Take My Hand (We'll Make It, I Swear)

by narceus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pack Dynamics, The Argent Family, Werewolf Allison, Werewolf Lydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narceus/pseuds/narceus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura's back in Beacon Hills, and she's got her newest pair of betas--<i>good</i> girls, both of them, and if she bit Allison mostly out of revenge in the first place, well, they're pack now.  The three of them are family, and Derek too, when he eventually gets out here, after Laura deals with the mysterious spirals appearing around their territory.  At least, that's the plan.</p><p>Plans have a way of going awry, but packs--those have a way of coming together, in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take My Hand (We'll Make It, I Swear)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Rarepair November, and in just under the wire :)
> 
> Aside from canon-style violence and character death, strong warning for the Argent family, abuse, and some predictably horrible responses to them finding out about Allison's lycanthropy.
> 
> Many thanks to crown_of_weeds, my eternal sounding board, and mzminola for a most excellent beta.

Lydia throws her head back and yowls at the top of her lungs, not a human noise, not a noise she even recognizes coming out of her own throat. Across the hall, Allison growls a low, violent rumble in the dark, glares back with shining yellow eyes. Lydia yanks at her chains with all her superhuman strength, but they hold tight.

"Look at me, girls," the voice says. _The_ voice, _that_ voice, _Laura’s_ voice. They couldn’t look away from their alpha if they tried. ” _Anchor_ ,” Laura says. ”Allison, what is your mother’s name?”

Allison growls again. Laura takes a step towards her, eyes red and blazing. ”What is your mother’s name?” she demands again. Allison whimpers.

“ _Victoria_ ,” Allison pants, voice strange and gravelly with the change.

"What’s your father’s name?" Laura asks.

"Chris," says Allison. "He’s Chris."

"Lydia," says Laura, and Lydia _snarls_ , tries to lunge, can’t quite make it before she’s snapped back by the chains. ”Lydia, negative b plus or minus the square root of what?” Lydia snarls again. ”Quadratic formula, Lydia, don’t you know it? Negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four times a times c all over two times a.” Lydia mouths the words silently while Laura recites the formula, familiar like a mantra. ”Negative b plus or minus the square root of—”

"—root of b squared minus four a c over two a." She knows this. Lydia knows this.

"Good," says Laura. "But you’re not good enough to tell me the formula definition for a derivative. Or are you?"

Lydia takes a deep breath. She knows this.

"Allison, what’s in your mom’s recipe for cookies?" Laura adds. "Think about that time she taught you. What’s the secret ingredient?"

"It’s a limit," Lydia says. "The limit as h goes to zero…"

The full moon doesn’t set for another six hours. Laura pulls them down from their shackles in the wee hours of the morning, and they slump down against the wall of the cold stone tunnels beneath Laura’s house.

Laura hands them each a bottle of water and then sits down on the ground between them, wrapping one arm around each of them and tugging them close, and in. Lydia is so tired, she can barely get the cap off her water bottle.

"Is it always going to be like that?" Allison asks. Laura tucks her closer against her side and strokes a hand over her hair, steady, soothing.

"You both did so good," she says. "It gets easier, I promise. But you made it through your first moon. You didn’t completely forget your anchors. I’m proud of you."

"My anchor’s not math," Lydia says. It’s _not_. She doesn’t know why that feels so important right now, but it really does.

"No," Laura says. "But it’s the quickest way to get at your pride." Oh. So Lydia’s alpha does know her, after all.

"We’re a pack for real now," Laura says. Allison reaches a hand across Laura’s lap, and Lydia grabs it, squeezes it tight, holds all three of them together. "You’re strong. You made it through your first full moon."

…

This is in early November. This is three and a half weeks after the first time they meet Laura Hale, and it’s not enough time for this kind of total life-changing commitment—but then, Allison’s always made friends fast.

She hadn’t known if she could trust Lydia, at first. Lydia Martin was pretty and preppy and popular, kept her boyfriend on a short leash, and she _said_ she wanted to be Allison’s friend, but who knew? Allison couldn’t tell, not yet. So she dragged Lydia out into the middle of the woods to go jogging.

They went jogging, and the skies opened up, and, drenched and shivering, they found the wreck of the old Hale house, and inside, there was Laura. It poured for three hours. They talked for three hours.

Laura told them about her family after they’d known each other for all of an hour, but then, trapped inside the burnt-out shell of her childhood home in the middle of a thunderstorm there wasn’t a whole lot else to talk about. She told them about her own personal little murder investigation. Lydia talked about her parents’ divorce, let Allison call her on being so much smarter than she ever let on. Allison talked about her family.

She didn’t mention Laura when she got home. It had all been…a lot, the kind of thing you make a Breakfast Club-style movie out of, only of course without the romance. She told her mother that she and Lydia had taken refuge in a coffee shop and talked about fashion for three hours instead. A couple of days later, they met Laura for coffee. Lydia already had a stack of research and suggestions about the murder investigation. Lydia, Allison’s found, is really good that way.

It took Laura three days to tell them about the werewolf thing. About what it was like not to have a pack. It took four more days for her to ask.

It took a day for Allison to say yes. And it was _dumb_ , so dumb—what happens when her parents move again? What if something happens to Laura, or Lydia? What if Laura’s mysterious unnamed werewolf hunters come after her?—but Allison’s so much stronger than she’s ever been before. She’s so much more secure.

Allison _fits_ , for the first time in her life, with people who aren’t just her family. It’s never been true before. Seventeen years, dozens of towns, and nobody has _ever_ really been on Allison’s side who’s not related to her by blood. Every place Allison has ever lived, she’s come in like it’s the second act of a play and she’s three beats late and just a step out of sync, already knowing she was going to get dragged away before the finale. Besides her family, nothing’s ever really been _for her_ before.

Laura looks at her with so much pride, not because she got _stuck_ with Allison but because she _chose_ her, for pack, for _good_. It matters.

“Greenberg smells like pickled beets today, I don’t even _want_ to know,” Lydia says under her breath, halfway down the hallway and not for anybody’s ears but Allison’s. Allison smiles a secret little grin and hugs her books tighter to her chest.

“It could be worse,” she murmurs quietly, because Lydia will hear her, even twenty yards away through all the chaos of passing period. “Remember when it was wet cat?”

“Unfortunately,” sighs Lydia. “Go to class, I’ll see you at lunch.”

And she will, because Lydia always does. It’s as good as a promise.

…

Laura knew Allison was an Argent within two hours of meeting her. She knew what she was going to do by the time they all went home that night.

Allison is smart, tough, fierce, _loyal_ , Laura couldn’t have asked for a better beta. Lydia was just supposed to be the buy-one-get-one free, but god, that girl’s a genius, and she knows herself so well. When this is finally all over, when Laura can bring Derek back home and start _living_ again, Lydia’s the one who’s going to get them all up on their feet. And she was just an accident.

Meeting Allison was just an accident. Claiming Allison, marking her, turning her—it’s the single stupidest risk Laura’s ever taken. But it wasn’t a mistake.

Either the Argents started the fire, trapped Laura’s entire family inside, mother, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, babies, _all_ , or they didn’t. Either this is the same family of hunters that drove half the packs on the west coast to a conference ten years ago, then promised a truce and slaughtered Deucalion’s entire pack in one night, or it’s not. Laura doesn’t _know_ , not for sure. She knows that, if they are the hunters Laura thinks they are, Allison’s as good as dead to them already. If they’re not, if they actually keep their precious code—well, Allison’s completely safe, and Laura has one more beta. She has three now, if you count Derek, still safe in New York City. Laura’s practically a real alpha, finally.

They took her pack’s children. Laura’s only taking one of theirs. She gave Allison a choice. Laura’s taking better care of Allison than Allison’s parents ever showed her and hers.

The girl was born and bred to be a hunter. Laura didn’t mean to love her. She didn’t mean to love either of them, but it was too late for that by the end of their first week as werewolves.

It’s been a long time since there’s been a pack.

…

At school, Lydia wraps her hand around Jackson’s arm and tucks herself into his side, and pretends she can’t see/smell/sense Allison bristling with jealous energy. Lydia’s never had a best friend before, either.

There’s this boy named Scott who keeps smiling at Allison like she hung the moon, and every time Allison smiles back, Lydia squeezes Jackson’s wrist a little tighter, until he starts an argument about it in the middle of the hallway.

They’re boys. They’re not pack. At night, Allison does a double backflip out of her bedroom window and meets Lydia on the driveway down below, and they take off running together, side by side, the two of them and Laura. What the hell will Scott McCall ever know about that?

…

The second full moon isn’t as bad as the first. Laura says they might even leave the chains off, for their third.

December rolls on past Christmas, and sometimes, in split seconds, it’s easy to forget that this isn’t all just _normal_. But Allison can smell every last spice in her mother’s kitchen cabinets and she’s been fixating on Scott McCall’s heartbeat since before Thanksgiving, just thumping away in his chest in chem lab, so loud she doesn’t understand how the whole world can’t hear. She can’t imagine ever going back. And something sinister is lurking in the forests around Hale House, and Laura’s still refusing to tell them much of anything about the hunters that killed her family, and she hasn’t answered her phone in three days.

Allison doesn’t use personalized ringtones. It’s hard to deal with them when you’re constantly meeting people and then moving away again, and it’s harder when you’re trying to keep a whole second life away from your parents. She has to pick the phone up and check the display before she finds out it’s Lydia, not Laura. Allison bites her bottom lip and hits the button to answer.

The police radio said that two joggers found a dead body in the woods today, and Allison’s father not-so-subtly locked the front door right after the report, like he was making a point. She hasn’t asked why her dad owns a police radio since she was ten. Like so many of her family’s weird little quirks, it doesn’t really seem important, in the face of werewolves and hunters and possible death.

“Hey, Lydia,” Allison says.

“Where are you?” Lydia asks, no hellos.

“I’m at home, why?” Allison asks.

It’s easy to hear the background noises around Lydia, even the quiet ones: the crunch of dead leaves, the twittering of birds. “Well, get out here,” Lydia says. “I’ve had enough of this, I’m going to find Laura, and I need you.”

That gets Allison sitting upright on her bed. “Lydia, they found a body out there today,” she says. “My dad said it was a young woman in her twenties.” Her father’s footsteps are quiet, for a human, but not quiet enough; hurriedly, she tacks on, “So he’s just kind of paranoid about letting me out the front door, you know?”

“Please, you could sneak out the window in ten seconds and you know it,” Lydia scoffs.

“Hi, Dad!” Allison says brightly instead of answering Lydia.

Her father pauses in the doorway, raises his eyes to her phone. “Oh, Lydia just wanted to know if I could come over and put together outfits for the first day of school,” she lies easily. “We wouldn’t be out too late…”

“Sorry, honey,” he says, and he really does sound it, heartbeat and all. “Maybe in a couple of days when they have a better idea of what happened.”

“Okay,” Allison says, and makes sure that only about a third of the disappointment she’s feeling comes out in her voice. If this goes on any longer than tonight, she’ll think about sneaking out once her parents are in bed, no matter how light a sleeper her mom is. “Did you want something?”

“Just wanted to let you know that I’ve got to go out, help a colleague with a problem tonight,” says her dad. “I won’t be home until late, so you should think about keeping your mother company later. I think she’s been eyeing the Scrabble board.”

“Yeah, I’ll try,” Allison promises. “I’ve really got to make sure I finished all the work I had over the break, so I don’t know if I can.”

Her dad smiles, accepting it for the brush-off they both know it is, nods. “Good girl,” he says, just warmly enough to make her feel guilty. “Get a good night’s sleep.”

Allison waits until his footsteps sound down the hall and reach the stairs before she lifts her phone back to her ear. “Did you hear that?” she asks quietly.

“We don’t know that it’s her,” says Lydia. “Not even the cops know that.” She hesitates long enough for Allison to realize with a sinking feeling that she really doesn’t want to know what’s coming next, then says, “And they didn’t find a body.”

“What do you mean, you just said—”

“They found half,” Lydia says hollowly. “I heard some of the policemen talking. They found half a body.”

“Oh, god.” Allison presses a hand to her stomach automatically, to push down the nausea. “But we still don’t know—”

“I’m at the house,” Lydia tells her. “There was a fight, and she’s not here, so either get here—”

“I can’t, Lydia, my mom’s going to be checking on me all night,” says Allison.

“Fine,” Lydia says. “I’ll find our alpha on my own.”

“Lydia…” Allison says. Downstairs her parents finish their low conversation and her father heads for the door, keys jingling sharply. Her mother goes back to loading the dishwasher with a rattle of silverware.

“Be careful,” Allison says finally.

“Hmf,” Lydia says sweetly. “Am I ever not?”

Allison beeps the phone off and puts it down on her bed. Her fingers miss their claws as much as her hands have lately started to miss her bow. Laura’s been encouraging her to spend time with her parents, to make sure they don’t suspect a thing, but this house is so new and sterile that Allison feels trapped. Like an animal, just waiting for the hunter to come by.

She hates feeling scared. She hasn’t been, since they met Laura, not very much, but something’s been thrumming in the pit of her stomach for nearly two days. There’s a raw, empty little hole where she hadn’t realized she’d been keeping the awareness of her tiny, three-person pack. She wants to see Lydia again, just to reassure herself that Lydia’s safe. She wants to see Laura, but Allison’s got an acid, horrible feeling that she knows exactly whose body the police found in the woods.

She lays her left hand on the dust jacket of her worn copy of _The Amber Spyglass_ and gently lets her claws slide out, one by one. She drums them lightly against the hard cover, careful not to gouge into it or rip the paper. Aunt Kate gave her these books, years ago. And besides, she’d never explain that to her parents.

..

Six months ago, Lydia Martin wouldn’t have been caught dead tromping around the woods in designer boots and last season’s least favorite minidress, especially not when she knows that Jackson was angling for one last booty call of winter break tonight. She certainly wouldn’t have been shivering and pretending it’s down to the January cold and not how very dark and alone the woods seem tonight. She has werewolf senses. She can hear for miles. Every last rustle makes her jump.

Lydia hates feeling scared, and lately it seems like she’s been scared all the time. Somehow Laura always makes it feel like she made the right choice, like it’s better to be afraid together in a pack than as one human girl alone. Made it feel. Made, because the faded smell of Laura and pain and something else new and wolflike is leading _here_ and Lydia doesn’t need to go down the slope and look at the body to know who it is.

She can’t. She _can’t_ , oh god she can smell the blood, even though it’s old and half-dried. People shouldn’t be able to _smell_ things like this. Being a werewolf was supposed to make her feel powerful. It was supposed to be her own special secret. Lycanthropy was supposed to be about youth and strength and beauty, and, fine, _pack_ —supposed to mean having people around who’d always take her seriously and didn’t care that she could solve complex differential equations in her head so long as she didn’t care that they could kill a rabbit with their teeth. And all right, yes, Lydia signed on for the full moons and the temper and the sudden cravings for really rare meat, and even for knowing that there would be people out there in the world who suddenly wanted to kill her just for being alive…

She didn’t sign on for this. Not _this_ , not for the sight and the smell of a friend’s mutilated corpse. Lydia has to get out of here. She’s going to be sick.

She’s always been a fast runner, even when she’s not in wolf form. She almost trips over her own feet trying to scramble back away. It would be quicker to go down on all fours, but Lydia can’t, if she lets the wolf take over now she’ll just keep running and never stop. She digs her fingers into her palms to make sure that her nails stay real, human fingernails, she needs to be human right now, not the wolf that wants to howl at the moon and then find someone living and tear their throats out in revenge, the wolf who wants to bathe in blood because _somebody killed her alpha_ —

…

The girl runs face-first into Derek’s chest in the woods, yanks away, and stumbles backwards into a tree. Derek hasn’t showered or slept in three days. He reeks like gas station burritos, and this whole forest reeks of _home_. It’s not time for nice.

“Hey,” he says. “Little red riding hood. In case you haven’t heard, it’s not safe to be out here at night.”

The girl straightens up, tugs her skirt back into place, and glares up at Derek like she’s not a full head shorter than he is. “What,” she asks. “Are there wolves around?”

He tilts his head and his nostrils flare, scenting. Shit. Her nails lengthen into claws just before he lunges.

Derek’s bigger than her, and a little bit desperate—three _days_ , the last thing he heard was _Something’s not right in these woods and it’s not the hunters_ , and Laura hasn’t answered her texts for three days. The girl is faster, lower to the ground, less exhausted. He’s got better control, it’s obvious that she can’t help giving into her instincts and slashing towards his throat once or twice, but right now Derek doesn’t want _control_ , he wants to know _where is his sister._

She slams a knee up towards his balls and rakes claws across his stomach. Derek grabs her by the shoulders and hurls her into a tree. There’s an audible _crack_.

She’s dazed, but only for a second. A moment later she’s down on all fours, snarling, never mind the broken ribs. Derek pulls back and growls at her.

“Where’s Laura Hale?” he asks.

“Dead,” the wolf spits bitterly. “Shouldn’t you know?”

Something breaks, deep in Derek’s chest, and he’d known, he’d _known_ , but…“What did you do to her?” he grits out, and the girl actually bristles enough to pull herself back upright.

“Excuse me?” she demands. “She was my _alpha_. You’re the one attacking young women in the middle of the forest, what did _you_ do to her?”

“She’s my sister,” says Derek. The girl is about sixteen. Laura couldn’t…she wouldn’t. Not a girl who’s sixteen.

“…Derek?” the girl tries tentatively. “Laura’s little brother?”

“Who’re you?” Derek demands. The lets the fangs and facial hair slip away, but Derek notices she’s keeping her claws out. He doesn’t bother to shift back. Not yet.

“Lydia Martin,” she says. “I was in Laura’s pack.” Derek draws back a little, and Lydia cocks her head to one side. “She didn’t mention us?”

“She didn’t mention that she was biting teenagers,” Derek says. Laura said she had new pack members. He’d been planning to look for them, after he looked for Laura. He hadn’t expected this.

Lydia tosses her hair over one shoulder. “She was a good judge of character,” she says.

"Was," repeats Derek. Lydia’s eyes dart back the way she’d come, then refocus on Derek.

"Well," says Lydia, voice shaking just a little. "She’s dead."

…

The first day back at school after break is supposed to mean coming in all overtired from two weeks of staying up too late, bouncing with news and gossip and paying no attention at all to the teachers. Well, Allison thinks, she’s got the ‘tired’ and the lack of attention parts down.

She walks into the building thirty minutes before the first bell, determined to find Lydia and get answers, but before she even puts her coat away and gets her books from her locker Lydia’s found her first.

Lydia is perfectly put together as always, dressed impeccably in purple and black. Allison knows how Lydia does armor, now. Lydia’s whole look is so flawless that Allison only has to glance at her face to know for sure.

Allison sags like somebody’s kicked a ladder out from under her, abruptly, right into Lydia’s arms. Lydia grabs her up tight, never mind the looks they must be getting from anyone else in the hallway. Her hair smells just like always, violets and lavender, and _Lydia_ underneath it, like pack, like home.

It should be weird, shouldn’t it, that _sniffing_ her best friend can ground her so much, but it’s just one of the many werewolf _things_ that’ve become almost second nature lately. Laura’s _dead_ , and it feels like Allison’s just lost a member of her family. Hugging Lydia feels like holding a sister that Allison’s had her whole life.

“It was really bad,” Lydia says, quiet and quavery like she’d never let anybody else in this school hear, right into Allison’s ear. Allison squeezes her harder, and Lydia squeezes back. “There’s more, too. We need to talk about it. Can you come out to the house with me after school?”

“Yes,” Allison says immediately, and then “maybe. I’ll ask my dad. If we’re back by dinner—”

“I don’t want to be out there after dark anyway,” Lydia says, and Allison shivers at it.

She gets halfway to class, squeezing her books tightly enough to stop her hands from shaking, when the thick plastic cover of her binder snaps from the force of her grip. It isn’t going to work. There’s a bathroom upstairs, on the third floor, near the old art classrooms, that’s almost always empty at this time of day. Allison takes the stairs two at a time and makes it almost to the bathroom door before she starts crying.

God, the last thing she needs is for anybody to catch her like this. Allison’s been the new kid so many times, which means she’s been the weepy new kid as well as the too-shy new kid, the too-loud new kid, the weird bow-and-arrows new kid, the weird tomboy new kid, the weird girly new kid, and just plain the weird kid. It sucks. She can’t deal with it, not today, not here. Allison knows the rules, and the rules are why she shuts herself into the last stall of the bathroom nobody uses, pulls her feet up so they don’t dangle below the partition, and buries her face in her knees so she won’t make a sound before she starts to sob.

There aren’t a lot of coherent thoughts after she gets past the first rush of shame and _come on, Allison, pull yourself together_. She tries, she really does. This isn’t what a strong person, a strong pack member, a _wolf_ looks like. Lydia is in class right now, with nobody in the school guessing that something is wrong. Allison is strong. Laura always said so. Allison is stronger than _this_ , stronger than hiding away to cry her eyes out, but…

Aside from Aunt Kate, Laura was the only person who’s ever looked at Allison and told her that she was strong like that. She said it so many times, from the very first night Allison shivered and shook through the bite, to the full moon. Allison had tears in her eyes by the end of last full moon, even though it was her second, she should be _better_ , and Laura pulled her close, and petted her hair, and told Allison that she was strong.

And maybe that means that Allison should be better than this, but Laura is dead and Allison presses her face into her knees and cries.

Lydia finds her between first and second period, long after Allison’s lost track of time and after the majority of her tears are dried up. She pulls Allison out of the bathroom stall and into a hug without saying a word, then tugs Allison over to the row of sinks and mirrors.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Lydia says. She hands Allison a couple of paper towels to wipe off her face, and starts pulling makeup out of her own purse, lipstick, foundation, concealer. Five minutes later, if Allison stiffens her lip to keep it from shaking, nobody but a werewolf could ever tell she was crying at all.

…

Lydia did her crying last night, in the privacy of her own room. She’s wearing too much eye makeup now to let herself do any more. Probably that’s why she’s not quite as distracted as Allison all day. Probably that’s why she’s not entirely surprised when they get out to the house after school, and Derek Hale is idly tossing an asthma inhaler up and down in one hand.

"Is that…" Allison starts, and Lydia sighs as though it’s all just much too slow for her liking.

"Yes, Scott McCall was out here for some reason last night," she says. "I almost hit him with my car on the way home. Did you somehow miss smelling him all day today?" Scott had smelled like dried blood and the tang of wolf musk, and he spent half of Chemistry zoning out on a couple of upperclassmen having a furious whispered breakup in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. Of course, Allison spent half of Chemistry staring off into space and zoning out on the exact same thing, so it’s not that much of a surprise that she didn’t notice.

“Another teenager?” Derek asks, heavy with sarcasm. “Great.”

"Look on the bright side," Lydia says, bitingly cheerful and pointedly ignoring Derek’s very existence. "If his new werewolf powers actually make him a halfway decent lacrosse player, it won’t even be social suicide to date him any more."

"Scott’s a werewolf?" Allison asks, dazed, a little slower on the uptake than usual. Lydia hates her bitterly for it, just for a second. It’s Allison’s job to be the strong one while Lydia’s freaking out. Allison’s not supposed to be an emotional mess. If Allison’s an emotional mess and Laura’s idiot brother Derek is here, ready to mess everything up and maybe the reason Laura died in the first place, then when does Lydia get to deal with the fact that she found her alpha in pieces last night? Lydia’s barely holding it together.

And Lydia hates Allison for Scott McCall, sweet quiet studious _nothing_ boy that he is. He’s not pack. He’s never met Laura. He will never meet Laura. He’s not one of them.

"Come on," Lydia says, and stomps off in the general direction of the forest. "He was going on at lunch about coming out here to look for that thing with his friend. We might as well meet him with it, or he’ll never stop making a nuisance out of himself."

It takes about half an hour for Scott and his sidekick to show up at the place where Lydia found Laura’s body. Derek spends the whole time glowering in the most silent and unhelpful fashion he can possibly manage. The way Scott smiles at Allison makes Lydia’s stomach turn.

…

They call Friday a double date, Scott’s first full moon, only Allison and Lydia’s third. Allison borrows her father’s scarf and her mother’s perfume. Lydia has her pride, her ambition, her drive, all her secret skills, her plans for the future to keep her human, but Allison’s only got one thing that’s been constant her entire life. She smells like her parents tonight, her parents who don’t know anything about werewolves but have always _been there_ , no matter what. Allison couldn’t ask for a better anchor than that.

She picks Scott up from his house, then Lydia. Jackson’s out with Danny, Lydia says, with a toss of her head like she couldn’t care less. It’s half an hour before sundown on full moon night, and there are three werewolves in the car together. Allison’s jittering under her skin before they even get out to the Hale house.

Derek’s waiting for them, which is why Allison’s not going to be chained up tonight. Lydia doesn’t trust him. Allison doesn’t trust him, either, but he and Lydia have been rubbing each other the wrong way since day 1. Lydia’s not going to let herself get put in chains with Derek around, and there’s no way Allison’s going to leave Lydia and Derek alone together on a full moon night.

First full moon without the chains. First full moon without _Laura_. Allison can do it—she was so good last month, they sat in their just-in-case manacles and had whole lucid conversations, shivering just a little with the occasional moon tremor. She has to do it.

"Well," Lydia says briskly, laying her messenger bag out on a rickety charred end table. "We have all night. I, for one, am going to get some homework done."

"You’re doing _homework_ ,” Derek says flatly.

"My anchor involves not failing out of school or sacrificing my future to mere biology," Lydia snipes back. Allison tunes the bickering out as best she can and smiles at Scott. He smiles back, nervously.

"You’ll make it through this," Allison promises. Scott’s got manacles on his wrists and shackles on his ankles, even though there are three older betas here who could bring him under control if he broke out. Lydia’s idea. Just in case. "We’ll help you."

"Thanks," Scott says. Allison squeezes his hand.

"I’ve been there, remember?" she says.

Behind her, there’s a sharp _snap_ of a breaking pencil. ”Oh, _damnit_ ,” Lydia swears.

"You were saying about anchors?" Derek asks.

"Hey," says Allison sharply. She drops Scott’s hand so she can turn around and take Lydia by the wrist firmly. "You doing okay?"

"Fine," Lydia says tightly. "Just fine. Reviewing my plans for exactly how I’ll display my Fields Medal over the mantle as we speak."

"Hard to earn that without a pencil, right?" Derek asks. Lydia glares at him.

"Why are you even here?" she demands. She’s about half a second from sprouting claws again, and they don’t need this, Allison’s way too ready to tear into something herself tonight.

"Enough!" Allison snaps. "Read a book, Derek. Lydia, _ignore him_. Scott, just think about your anchor and it’ll all be over soon.” She hasn’t asked what Scott’s anchor is. Maybe he’ll figure it out tonight.

Allison curls her fingers into the wool of her borrowed scarf and breathes deep. She loves her family. Her family loves her. There’s nothing werewolf about it.

At 1 AM, when they hear the distant crunching of boots on leaves around the property line, Scott starts up a rumbling growl so loud that Derek is up on his feet, slapping one hand over Scott’s mouth, before Allison can even move. Lydia sits frozen, one hand clenched, ready to snap another pencil.

Allison breathes in, her mom’s perfume, her dad’s scarf, the jacket her Aunt Kate sent for her last birthday, and imagines she’s listening to her dad talk. He would want her to be cautious. He wouldn’t want her to be afraid.

 _Nothing here to worry about_ , Allison hears in her dad’s voice, so clear in her mind it’s like he’s really there.

She breathes. She doesn’t shift.

…

There’s an alpha werewolf running around town somewhere. Scott’s alpha, say Allison and Lydia and Derek. Not their alpha. Just Scott’s.

If Scott has to be a werewolf, he wishes he’d known Laura Hale. Maybe if she were still alive, everything would make sense. Allison and Lydia and Derek never had an alpha sneaking in and out of their dreams, dragging them up out of bed at night, getting into their heads. Sometimes Scott doesn’t know what’s his any more, what’s the werewolf, and what’s the alpha wolf in the back of his head again.

Instead of Laura, all they’ve got are Laura’s notes—and really, the police have Laura’s notes, because Lydia and Derek couldn’t stop fighting over how much they didn’t trust each other until Stiles stepped in and suggested that maybe they could give the records of Laura’s ongoing arson investigation to the actual police investigators instead of arguing over them. Stiles kept photocopies, because he’s Stiles, and the five of them have been trying to figure something out with it, but so far there’s nothing. Just two completely different enemies, the hunters and the alpha, and they’re not even really sure which one killed Laura Hale. Or what they’re going to do when they find out.

Stiles says the police are officially looking for a thirty-year-old blonde woman who they’re calling a ‘person of interest’. Allison’s got a copy of a picture of the lady’s necklace. Scott caught her frowning at it once.

"Do you recognize it?" he asked, and Allison shook her head, pushed the piece of paper away across the table.

"I feel like I should," she said. "But no. Laura didn’t even show us half of this stuff while she was alive. I don’t even know how she tracked Mr. Harris down."

Allison makes it all go easier. When Allison’s around, Scott can concentrate better. Scott can concentrate on _her_ , and that’s fine, that’s perfect, it keeps him from fanging out on the lacrosse field when Jackson body-checks him again and Lydia claps and cheers from the stands. Scott hasn’t figured out exactly _why_ Lydia Martin kind of seems to hate him, but he thinks that’s probably about Allison, too.

He’s not sure if that’s why he and Allison aren’t really dating yet, why she’ll reach for his hand under the desks when Scott’s having trouble staying human in class but she hasn’t kissed him. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Allison really just likes him as a friend, and that’s _fine_ , Scott can be friends, it’s just really confusing when she keeps holding his hand. And he keeps wanting and needing her to hold his hand.

Friends. Maybe. Probably.

Girls are _confusing_. Werewolves, more so.

...

It only takes about two weeks to realize why Laura never let Lydia and Allison see most of her notes. She expected too much of them, though. They probably wouldn't have figured it out, just from the collection of papers and evidence. They don't, in time.

"I don't know, he just makes me uncomfortable," Allison says. "I always feel like he's watching me. And he makes my parents all tense."

"How long is he staying for?" Lydia asks, and Allison sighs.

"A while?" she says. "I wish Aunt Kate had come instead, like she said she was going to. He says he wants the chance to _get to know his granddaughter_ or something." Allison rolls her eyes. "I haven't even seen him since I was three. What am I supposed to do, say, 'Hi, grandpa Gerard, I'm a werewolf'? I don't know what he wants from me."

"Just act like a typical teenage girl," Lydia advises. "Pretend you're me. And text me tonight so I know dinner went well."

Dinner doesn't go well.

...

There are a lot of ways to identify a werewolf trying to pass as a human. Some of them are subtle, semi-circumstantial: flash photography, high-pitched noises beyond the frequency of normal human hearing. Some of them require days or even weeks of careful observation. Some of them are deadly. Others just hurt a little.

Allison drops the knife; it clatters loudly to the ground while she yelps and grabs at her stinging palm. The patch of skin that pressed against the handle is blistering red.

She looks up, and her father is staring at her, standing on the other side of the dining room table. Did he see her eyes flash, when it burned her? He's staring at her like he's been punched in the gut.

"The handle burned," Allison says, and her mother walks in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and says, "What's going on out here?"

"Allison, just kick the knife over to me," her father says. They're supposed to be clearing the table for dinner. Allison's father and grandfather were talking business about some new merchandise, it's spread out all over the dinner table. Her father's hand is still curled around the grip of a .45 he'd been tidying up.

"Okay?" she says. It's not like she wants to touch the thing again, not with whatever weird chemical or acid is all over the handle. Allison just needs to hide her hand before her parents realize how fast it's healing, that's all. She kicks it with the toe of her boot, under the table towards her father.

"Chris, what's going on?" her mother repeats, sterner now.

"Dad?" Allison's dad calls. He's still looking at her. He's still staring at her. Allison takes a step back. Her dad's never looked at her like that before.

"What's the matter, Chris?" Allison's grandfather asks. He and her mom are flanking her now, behind her on either side, and Allison doesn't know why she's noticing that but her dad keeps _looking at her._

He bends down and picks up the knife, holds it easily in one hand. The .45 is still in his other hand, still pointed safely out of the way at the table. It's just pointed at the table directly in front of her, now.

"Dad, what's going on?" Allison demands, because he's holding the knife with no problem, which means it only affected her, and her palm isn't healing yet, but why would that mean that her dad looks ready to throw up.

"This is the knife you were treating with wolfsbane, right?" Allison's dad says, and Allison takes another step back, and there are loaded crossbows on that table.

"No," she says. " _No._ "

"Wolfsbane paste, for a little extra kick," says Gerard.

"Allison, show me your hand," her mother demands sharply, and no, no no no no, Allison looks back and forth wildly, shaking her head, holding her hand to her chest, and--

they shot Lydia with a crossbow just a week and a half ago, pinned her arm to a tree and Scott took an arrow to the shoulder pulling her loose, and both of them _ran_ , neither of them _ever saw the hunters' faces_ \--

beautiful thirty-year-old blondes who lived in Beacon Hills six years ago, then left, and what kind of family roams the country armed to the teeth anyway, no, _no_ , no no no no no--

"No," says Allison, "no, you're not, tell me you're _not_."

And her father lifts the nose of the gun in his hand, and he says, "Allison--" And then he stops, and he's crying, but he's still looking at her and he's still pointing at her with the gun in his hand.

"Daddy?" Allison asks. Pleads.

"When did it bite you, Allison?" her mother demands. "How long?"

"Three months," Allison whispers, and her father sways, sags, the nose of the gun drops, she should _run_ \--

Allison turns, and her grandfather's got a crossbow, steady and loaded, aimed straight for her heart. "Chris, get the handcuffs," Gerard says. "We need to talk about how to deal with this."

...

Allison doesn't text.

Allison doesn't call.

Lydia paces her bedroom, back and forth, and grits her teeth and Facebooks Scott McCall. Scott hasn't heard from Allison since school got out.

Lydia sends Allison a fourth text, and waits half an hour, and then gives in to whatever paranoid nerves are preying on her mind, and makes a call that goes straight to voicemail.

Allison doesn't text. Allison doesn't call.

...

Scott's phone rings. "I'm outside your house with Derek," Lydia announces as soon as he picks up. "If Stilinski's with you, bring him, but we're not stopping to pick him up."

"What's wrong?" Scott asks. It's 11 PM on a Tuesday, but with the life he lives now, this isn't even that weird. He grabs a hoodie, glances towards the door--he can hear his mom watching TV in the living room, just gearing herself up to leave for a graveyard shift--and heads for the window.

"Something's not right with Allison," Lydia says. "Don't even start in with 'how do you know', _Derek_. I know."

"Just because she's not as glued to her cell phone as some teenage girls," Scott can hear Derek grumble on the other end of the line.

"She was worried about her grandfather even before she went home," says Lydia. "And who knows what the alpha is up to."

Scott swings over the porch roof and lands easily on the grass on two feet. Sometimes, being a werewolf _is_ really cool. "Is her grandfather worse than her dad?" he asks. "I went over there for dinner once, and I kept thinking Mr. Argent was going carve me up like the roast and serve me, and I wasn't even dating her." He adds the last part to test a theory, waits for Lydia's response, but it's overridden.

" _Argent_?" Derek demands. There's a scuffle at the other end; by the time Scott breaks through the bushes and gets to the car, Derek is just grabbing Lydia's cell phone from her hand. "Did you say their last name was _Argent_?"

"Um, _yes_ ," Lydia says tartly. She snatches her phone back. Scott slides into the back seat.

"Dude, you've known us for three weeks, how do you not know that?" Scott asks.

Derek's face, even under the street lights, is deathly pale. "Get to her house," he says. "Go _now_."

...

"I'm not going to do it," Allison says. "You're going to have to do it yourself."

Her father pauses on the stairs. "I brought you some hot tea," he says. The mug smells like chamomile, wolfsbane, and sedatives.

Gerard said Allison should take whatever human compassion she had left, and spare her parents from having to kill their only daughter. He hadn't left her any water with the bottle of sleeping pills, but Allison's been a werewolf for three months. She probably could've downed the whole bottle and lived anyway.

Wolfsbane, now. That might do it.

"I don't have anything to say to you," says Allison. She only just stopped crying again, and if he doesn't leave, the tears are all going to come back. She can't cry in front of her dad right now.

"Your mother made it," says her dad. He walks the rest of the way down the stairs, sets the mug on the table next to the pen and the blank paper. The pills that Gerard left her are somewhere on the other side of the room, wherever they landed when Allison threw them.

"You want me to die," Allison says hollowly. "You think I should die. Just because I'm a werewolf." Maybe she's wrong about not having anything to say to him.

"We have a code," her father begins, and Allison snorts.

"Yeah, Gerard told me all about your _honor_ ," she says.

" _No,_ " says her father, and steps in, closer than Gerard had dared, close enough that Allison could hurt him badly if she tried. He grabs Allison's shoulders, rough. " _Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent_. That's the code."

"What about Laura?" Allison demands. "Was she hunting you? Because you killed her family? Is that why you killed her?"

"We didn't kill Laura Hale," Allison's dad says, and his heartbeat is perfectly even, maybe even a little slower than normal. "And I had no part in killing her family."

"Aunt Kate did," Allison says, and her dad looks away.

"Your aunt broke the code," he says. "We'll deal with her, too."

"After you deal with me," Allison says. "After you kill me."

" _No_ ," her father says, head swinging back around, staring her in the eyes, squeezing her shoulders tight. "No. Allison..."

"What?" she asks, and he looks to the side again, pulls back. Takes a step away.

"Your pack," he says. "They've never killed an innocent human. Right?"

"I'm not going to tell you about my pack," Allison says immediately.

"Where are they now?" he demands. "Do you think they're strong enough to protect you? Do you think they're going to save you tonight?"

Allison glares at him. Most of her hopes that Lydia and Scott and Derek stay far, far away from here, but she knows them. She loves them. " _Yes._ "

"Good." Then Allison's dad drops a key on the table.

"Listen to me," Allison's dad says, before she can put her scattered confusion together to figure out what just happened. "Listen to me. Your mother is distraught, and she made a mistake with the tea. You wait until I go back upstairs to use this. You don't come up into the rest of the house. You leave through that window over there." He points to the corner near the laundry room, where the window will let out into the bushes in front of the house. "You go to your pack, and you do not come back to this house while Gerard is anywhere near this _state._ "

"I don't understand," says Allison. It's the key to the chain around her wrists, she knows it is. The tea smells like wolfsbane.

"We don't defy him, Allison," her father says, so darkly and intensely that Allison suddenly feels the weight of centuries of family tradition, harder than she has all night. "Your mother made everybody tea to calm our nerves. She made a mistake. I was drowsy, I stepped too close, and you took the key out of my pocket. You waited until I went upstairs to use it. Once you're out of this house, you're just like any other werewolf. _Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent_. If you and your pack don't cause trouble, we don't have to come after you."

"So what was all this?" Allison demands. "A test?"

"We take our own lives when we run the risk of turning into what we've been hunting," says Allison's father. "Grown hunters. Not seventeen-year-old girls who've never fired a gun at a living target."

"So you still think it's better to be dead than to be a werewolf," says Allison. "Just not for me."

"Allison--" He cuts himself off.

He ducks his head, not looking at anything in particular. Anything but her. Allison can’t stop watching her father’s face, his bitter, rueful grimace of a smile.

"There are winter clothes in storage off the laundry room," he says. "Take a coat when you leave. It's cold."

…

"You're _sure_ it's the same Argents?" Scott asks for the ten-millionth time. Lydia ignores Derek's equally repetitive and inane response, and squeals around the corner. She sent Allison home to a house full of hunters. For the past three and a half months, they've sent Allison home, every single day, to a _house full of hunters._

Her hands are shaking on the wheel, and maybe it's fear and maybe it's _rage_. They burned down a house, these werewolf hunters, with innocents, children, babies. They'd willingly kill humans to get at werewolves, which meant they aren't even the kind of fundamentalist racists who’re in it to _protect their own kind_ , no, they’re the kind of fundamentalist racists who just want all werewolves dead no matter what the cost. And Lydia is not going to let that happen. Lydia _can not_ let that happen.

She's so intent on getting where she's going that Lydia doesn't even see the dark shape by the curb until it darts out into the middle of the street, and Lydia has to slam on the breaks. She's about to throw the car into reverse when she sees the glint of eyes, gold not red, and throws open her door instead.

"Allison?" she calls. 

"Lydia!" Allison scrambles out of the beam of the headlights around the side of the car, and practically dives for the back seat. "Get out of here, go," she's ordering even before her door is closed. Lydia complies.

"What happened?" Scott asks. Lydia tilts her rear-view mirror down and unabashedly watches Allison try to settle herself into the back seat. Her face is tear-streaked. When Scott reaches a hand out to her, Allison folds into his embrace. Lydia stomps a little harder on the accelerator.

"They let me go," Allison says.

"The Argents?" Derek demands.

"My _parents_ ," says Allison. "They let me go."

...

Derek lets Allison camp out at the house with him for the next few days. It's the least he could do, Allison thinks, for never mentioning that the hunters in town who bashed in his windshield that time were named _Argent. ___

__Laura could've mentioned it too._ _

__Allison skips school Wednesday to sit quietly in one corner of the living room, breathing in the smell of smoke and charred wood and death and trying to find a new anchor. She skips Thursday and Friday to help Derek look for clues about the rogue alpha, and because she can't exactly go out in public with her parents and grandfather ready to track her back to her pack at a moment's notice._ _

__On Saturday morning, a week and a half before the next full moon, they convene at the house, all five of them. Lydia sits next to Allison on the porch steps and squeezes her hand. Allison squeezes back._ _

__Lydia's pack. Lydia's one of the only things in the world that's really Allison's any more. Laura lied. Allison's family lied. The boys...they're getting on to being pack, and maybe they already are, but Lydia is _Allison's_. She smells like lavender and violets, and her hand is tight in Allison's grip._ _

__"No missing persons report," Stiles reports. "Nobody's gone to the police with anything, my dad hasn't even mentioned your family's name this week."_ _

__"They're not going to get the police involved if they want to kill her," Derek says, and Allison flinches._ _

__"Uh, no, exact opposite, actually," Stiles says. "How do _you_ think it's going to look if Allison turns up dead, and then the cops find out that she hasn't been seen in a week and her parents never reported anything?_ _

__"Well, you can't keep sleeping here," Lydia announces, with a scathing look for the wreckage around them. "You're coming home with me."_ _

__"No, Lydia, I can't put you or your mom in danger." If Allison goes home with Lydia, they'll _know_ who the rest of her pack is._ _

__"What if Allison stays with Stiles?" Scott suggests. "Even if they think Stiles is part of your pack, he's not a werewolf, and he can prove it. And they're not going to do anything when you're staying in the sheriff's house, right?"_ _

__"Problem," Stiles points out. "I mean, yeah, I'd be happy to have you, but how are we supposed to get my _dad_ to agree to something like that without either dragging her back home or reporting and investigating her parents for child abuse?"_ _

__"Figure it out," Derek says sharply._ _

__"For once, I agree with Derek," Lydia adds with a toss of her head in Derek's direction. "McCall's idea isn't terrible. For once. Figure it out, Stilinski."_ _

__"No, it's fine," Allison says. She needs Lydia's grip on her hands to feel grounded in one place. Maybe she shouldn't be around regular humans for a while anyway. "It's okay. I can go back to school on Monday and just keep staying out here. I'm the weird out of town girl, nobody's going to know to check whether I'm living with my parents or not anyway."_ _

__"There isn't a _shower_ out here." Lydia wrinkles her nose, mostly in Derek's general direction._ _

__"Actually," Stiles says, then hesitates. He's looking at Allison and Lydia. He's looking, in fact, at their joined hands. "I might sort of have an idea. If you guys are up for a little acting."_ _

__..._ _

__There is no way Lydia is going to let Stiles Stilinski try to pull this off unsupervised. There's also no way he's going to be able to pull this off if he knows he has an audience. So she's on his roof._ _

__"So, dad," he says, with intense studied casualness. "I need a favor. Like, a really, really big favor."_ _

__"Define _big_ ," Sheriff Stilinski says._ _

__"Of a reasonably great magnitude,” says Stiles. "So, you know the guest room we never use?"_ _

__"Is there some reason that's going to be changing in the near future?" asks the sheriff. Lydia really does not get the parent-child relationship here. It almost seems like suspicion is an affectionate game in this household. How Stiles keeps any secrets at all is a mystery._ _

__"Here's the thing," says Stiles. "I've got a friend who really needs a place to stay, and she really can't go home, but she also really doesn't want to make a big deal out of it. No child abuse here. No mandated reporting. Just good old-fashioned family disputing."_ _

__"Right," says the sheriff. "And the name of this friend?"_ _

__"Allison Argent," Stiles says promptly. The sheriff pauses._ _

__"The girl Scott's been talking about for three months?" he asks. Lydia slips a little on the roof tiles, has to dig her claws in a little to stay in place. The Stilinskis might want to replace that sometime soon. Oops._ _

__"That would be her," Stiles confirms._ _

__"And the nature of this family dispute?" asks the sheriff._ _

__"Well," says Stiles. "Apparently Allison's grandfather walked in on Allison making out with her girlfriend and threw a huge homophobic fit, and Allison's parents are sorry, but she can't live there anymore. And her girlfriend's not out, so she can't stay there, and Scott's still kind of half in love with her so it would be really, really awkward to offer to let her stay there, and it sort of got mentioned that we have a spare room and it might be kind of useful for her to be living in the sheriff's house if her grandfather decided to cause any more trouble..."_ _

__"What kind of trouble?" the sheriff asks, picking up the bait beautifully, and Lydia waits tense and expectant. If Stiles doesn't sell this right, she'll..._ _

__"Nobody at Allison's house hurt her," Stiles says quickly. "Allison swears. There's nobody to arrest, you can't go marching over there without making everything way worse, she just doesn't feel all that safe right now. And we thought maybe here would sort of feel...safer." There's a pause, one second, two seconds, and Lydia would have given the sheriff more time to digest, but-- "Also, I should probably mention that her girlfriend's Lydia Martin."_ _

__"Lydia Martin," the sheriff says flatly. "Lydia Martin who you've had a crush on since the third grade," Lydia rolls her eyes, as _if_ Stilinski could ever hit this, "is dating the girl that your best friend has had a crush on since last October, who just got thrown out of her house over it, and you want her to stay _here._ "_ _

__"Mostly for Scott," Stiles admits. "I don't even think he's trying to impress Allison or anything, he just actually likes her so much he's willing to do things like call on ten years of friendship just to make sure she's safe and happy." He pauses. "And I like Allison. I think it's shitty what happened to her. She doesn't deserve that."_ _

__"Are you sure I can't just go and have a talk with her father--"_ _

__"Dad, _no_ ," Stiles says firmly. "Seriously. I know how you complain about domestic disputes. This one's not going to be any better. You'd only make it worse for her."_ _

__"Fine," sighs the sheriff. "I want to have a talk with Allison before I agree to anything."_ _

__Lydia can't actually believe that just worked._ _

__..._ _

__The guest room smells like dust and chemical air freshener. Allison’s only belongings are the things she’s borrowing from Lydia or one of the boys, and half a duffle bag’s worth of clothes and toiletries that Lydia insisted on paying for._ _

__The house is quiet, Stiles and his dad are both out, and all Allison wants to do is _sleep.__ _

__Instead, she walks over and opens the window. Lydia climbs in a moment later._ _

__Being a werewolf suits Lydia. She never would have even thought about scaling buildings and climbing over window sills, if she weren’t. Allison turns away, anyway, back towards the bed, where she can lay herself face-down and bury her whole face in the pillow. Lydia shuts the window._ _

__After four days of roughing it with Derek, the bed is almost too soft. There’s indoor plumbing and central heat in here, a fridge downstairs, everything a normal house needs, and Allison is never going to see her bedroom again. All of her things, the clothes she picked out with her mom and the jewelry Aunt Kate gave her, her books, her photos, her box of old poetry and failed attempts at art that she’d never wanted anybody to look at, ever. She’s never going to see it again. She can’t even try to break in and grab any of it, not with Gerard around, and who knows when he’ll leave? Maybe not until Allison’s dead._ _

__The mattress sinks down from Lydia’s weight, but Lydia doesn’t say anything, just eases herself down along Allison’s side, wrapping a warm arm over Allison’s back. She’s the only heartbeat anywhere nearby right now._ _

__“Do you want to talk about it?” Lydia asks quietly. Allison lifts her head, turns it away from Lydia so she can talk, but she doesn’t have to be face to face. Lydia nuzzles into the back of her neck._ _

__“Laura knew,” Allison says, voice quiet and even. “She knew the whole time. She knew the day she met us.”_ _

__“She must’ve,” Lydia agrees. “D’you think that’s why she wanted to turn you?”_ _

__“Of course it is,” says Allison. “She didn’t need to lie about it. She knew this would happen.”_ _

__“If it’s any consolation,” Lydia says, hand stroking over Allison’s shoulder, up and down, in the rhythm of a heartbeat, “she loved you. She did, I could tell. She loved both of us.”_ _

__Allison laughs, and her voice cracks on it, for the first time today. She pushes her forehead down into the pillow._ _

__“It’s not,” she says._ _

__Allison’s parents love her, too. Aunt Kate loves her. If Allison ever sees Aunt Kate again, the only way to survive the encounter will probably be to kill her. Aunt Kate _loves_ her._ _

__“It’s really not.”_ _

__..._ _

__The alpha is Derek’s uncle, so at least Allison isn’t the only one with homicidal family issues. Stiles has been waiting for the right time to try to use that as a cheer-up method._ _

__It’s three days to the full moon, and aside from a handful of moments of sheer terror, most of them involving Derek’s uncle, a couple of them involving the fact that right now apparently Allison doesn’t even have Scott’s ability to anchor and she _lives in Stiles’ house_ , it’s been business as usual. If ‘business as usual’ meant Lydia Martin coming over to Stiles’ house every day after school to aggressively cuddle and do homework or watch movies on the couch._ _

__Cuddle with Allison. Stiles is allowed to stay in the room if he sits on the other side of it. It’s a fair deal, he figures. Sometimes his dad comes in and gets this expression on his face like Stiles is going to have to think fast to execute an intervention before the sheriff of Beacon County finds Chris Argent at a gas station and punches him in the face._ _

__Sometimes Scott comes over, and sits next to Stiles, and they all do homework together. There’s something about _his_ expression that’s been getting less longing and more, just, _sad_ lately, and a sad Scott is _not what they need right now.__ _

__"I think I need to find a new anchor," Scott says. It’s private at home for once, at least. The girls are out shopping, in full public, safe as they can get. Stiles glares at him._ _

__"You have an anchor. Allison’s your anchor."_ _

__"It doesn’t seem right," Scott says. "I didn’t ask or anything, she just…is."_ _

__"So what?" Stiles asks. "It’s not like you’re demanding a lifetime commitment from her or anything. You literally just want her to exist, and hold your hand sometimes so you can keep from _killing anybody_. And as the guy standing next to you a good 90% of the time, can I just say, I am a big fan of you not killing anybody.”_ _

__"I just don’t think it’s fair to ask her to do that when right now she still needs to hold Lydia’s hand so _she_ can keep from killing anybody,” sighs Scott. ”It should be something else.”_ _

__"The full moon is in three days," Stiles informs him. "Two and a half, actually. And I am not going to lock myself in your bedroom with you while Lydia and Jackson parade around town looking as much not like werewolves as possible and Allison hides in the woods with Derek, if you don’t have an _anchor_. It’s Allison, dude. You are going to borrow her hoodie and smell her all night long if you have to, because we don’t have time to find you anything better.”_ _

__"But—" Scott says, and Stiles sighs._ _

__"And then the next day we’ll start trying to find you something else, okay?" he says. "Maybe your mom."_ _

__"Yeah," says Scott dejectedly. "Maybe."_ _

__Stiles jabs Scott between the ribs with his toes. ”Maybe we’ll find you a nice boy at school,” he says._ _

__"Stiles…" Scott says warningly._ _

__"Since _everyone we know is gay_ ," Stiles says, and jabs at Scott again._ _

__"Stiles, I said I was _sorry_ —”_ _

__"You told my dad—," Stiles says. Jab. Jab. Scott rolls over on the bed to grab Stiles’ ankle and look at him._ _

__"You’re a terrible liar and I had to say something!"_ _

__"You had to tell my dad I was gay?”_ _

__"You told your dad everybody else we know is gay!” Scott points out. “You were literally _just_ telling him that Jackson was Lydia’s beard and in love with Danny.”_ _

__"And you couldn’t have said that I was over my crush on Lydia because _I_ was in love with Danny?” Stiles demands._ _

__"You’ve known Danny for years, we only know one new person besides Allison!" Scott says. "I told you, I panicked!"_ _

__"You told my dad that I had a crush on _Derek Hale_ ,” Stiles says, and Scott pauses to give him a look of pure innocence._ _

__"Isn’t hot and terrifying sort of your type?"_ _

__Stiles pounces._ _

__Play-wrestling with a werewolf is sort of less fun because Stiles knows that Scott is totally letting him win, but it’s still really satisfying to be able to pin Scott down on the bed and say things like, “You are the _worst friend ever_ ,” and, “my type is hot terrifying people who are _actually competent at being in charge of stuff,_ can you imagine ever putting Derek in charge of _anything_ , we would all be dead in a _week_ ,” and, “I’m only like half gay anyway!”_ _

__"Gay enough for Derek," Scott smirks back at him, and Stiles growls._ _

__"My dad still thinks he’s a _serial killer. I_ still think he might be a—”_ _

__"Ahem." Stiles and Scott both turn towards the door. Stiles is suddenly very aware that he’s straddling Scott’s waist, pinning Scott’s arms above his head, and he’s been shouting at what was probably some serious volume about what proportion of gay he is._ _

__"Um," Stiles says. He can’t move now, that’ll be like admitting this is weird. "Hey, Dad."_ _

__"I was just going to ask if you boys wanted to order a pizza, or if you knew what time Allison was going to be home," he says. "But I can come back later."_ _

__"Pizza sounds good," Scott says. "Um, I think Allison and Lydia were eating at the mall."_ _

__"Okay then," Stiles’ dad says. "Carry on."_ _

__"There better be green peppers on that pizza!" Stiles shouts after the closing door, a second late on the reflex. The door clicks pointedly all the way shut. Stiles looks down at Scott._ _

__"Um," he says. Belatedly, he remembers to scramble to the side._ _

__"So," Scott says. "That was…"_ _

__"Weird and slightly incestuous-feeling?" Stiles finishes before his brain can catch up with his tongue. Scott’s supposed to be like his _brother_. ”I vote we never speak of this again.”_ _

__"Right," Scott agrees instantly._ _

__The next day at school, Lydia and Jackson have a screaming breakup in the middle of the halls, subtext _Jackson finally found out about the werewolf thing._ Scott and Stiles watch from the safety of a classroom doorway, twenty feet away._ _

__"You know," Scott remarks, "this means you didn’t have to lie to your dad about Jackson at all."_ _

__"I know," says Stiles._ _

__"You could have just said that he didn’t know about Lydia and Allison, and then he just found out."_ _

__"Yep, got that," says Stiles. "Just so you know, you’re vice president of the new Beacon Hills unofficial GSA we’re apparently starting as a cover for being a werewolf pack. Since you’re such a great liar, you get to be the one to find a reason why Danny can’t join."_ _

__"Who’s president?" Scott asks automatically._ _

__"Lydia," says Stiles. "Hot, terrifying, and good at being in charge of stuff."_ _

__…_ _

__"What do you mean, you’re still going out with him tonight?" Something deep in the pit of Allison’s belly growls. She wonders if she could drown Jackson in the school swimming pool and make it look like an accident. Claws would be too obvious._ _

__"The plan hasn’t changed," Lydia snaps. "I’m already suspect number one for your family’s little psychodrama, which means that I need to look as human tonight as possible. Jackson is human. He wants to be a werewolf. When we’re done dealing with Derek’s uncle, somebody will be an alpha, which means that person can bite Jackson and give him what he wants, so in return he’s agreed to help."_ _

__"Are you going to have sex with him?" Allison asks. Lydia smells like Jackson, like she used to. Her hair is mussed._ _

__"That’s none of your business," says Lydia. Allison curls her hand into a fist, and thinks with the memory of Derek’s voice in her head, _anger. Channel the anger. Anchor on the anger.__ _

__It doesn’t make her want to disembowel Jackson any less, but if Allison focuses on that, it keeps the claws in. Maybe Derek really is onto something here. ”It’s my business if you’re my _girlfriend_ , Lydia,” Allison hisses. ”You guys are going to look a lot less like beards if one of the sheriff’s deputies finds you parked and fucking in the back seat of his Porsche.”_ _

__"What do you want?" Lydia asks. "A public declaration? Do you want me to take you home so the sheriff can catch us necking on his couch while the boys have lacrosse practice, and he can give us the awkward talk about age of consent laws in California again?" She takes a step closer into Allison’s personal space, and Allison breathes in, lavender and violets. "You’re acting like a jealous girlfriend, Allison," she says. "Last I checked, we weren’t doing that at school. You’re letting the moon run away with you."_ _

__Allison takes a deep breath. “You’re right,” she says. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”_ _

__…_ _

__Two hours later, Allison finds Lydia standing by her locker, checking her makeup for the umpteenth time today. Perfect control begets perfect control, and Lydia feels the pull of the moon deep in her gut, she just doesn’t have the time to react to it._ _

__Allison is a little rumpled, shirt slightly askew. “I need to leave,” Allison says abruptly. “I shouldn’t be out in public today.”_ _

__"Do you need me to take you home?" Lydia asks immediately._ _

__"I don’t know," says Allison. She rubs at her face. "Somebody should, but you can’t risk…they might not know you’re a werewolf yet, that’s the whole point, right? They can’t know."_ _

__"Allison, what’s going on?" Lydia demands. She’s been shutting down her sense of smell as much as possible today. She doesn’t want to pay attention to it._ _

__"Scott and I just got to second base in Coach Finstock’s office before our heads cleared up enough to realize we wouldn’t normally do this," says Allison. She tugs her arms tighter around herself. "He promised he’d go find Stiles. He shouldn’t be out today either, not the way things are, but…"_ _

__Lydia is not cold. It is a perfectly normal room temperature in here. And she’s not going to go claw Scott McCall’s face off. He hasn’t got an alpha and it’s his second full moon ever. Those responses are irrational and moon-driven and Lydia is better than that. She’s better than that._ _

__The limit as h approaches zero of f of x plus h minus f of x over h represents the derivative of f of x, and the slope of the line tangent to f at x. Lydia is better than that. She’s better than that._ _

__"Can you keep from jumping Jackson’s bones long enough for him to get you to the sheriff’s house?" Lydia asks stiffly. "You can fake a stomach ache, and I’ll make my doting boyfriend take my best friend home, then you can sneak out the window and meet Derek. He’ll escort you out to the woods. Stiles and I should both stay here to control Scott and keep our cover."_ _

__"I don’t want to hurt him," Allison says. She’s wearing, Lydia realizes abruptly, a different jacket than she came to school in. That’s what smells so much like Scott. Allison’s clutching it around herself like a safety blanket._ _

__If Lydia spends any more time in this conversation, she’s not going to be able to face Scott again today. There isn’t time today for murder, and there isn’t time today for crying. Somebody has to keep it together. That’s always Lydia’s job, since Allison’s parents almost tried to kill her. Lydia hates that job._ _

__She’s better than that hate. How is she supposed to win the Fields Medal if she can’t get her own head and house in line? “Jackson will be fine,” Lydia says. “We can’t leave Scott here without another werewolf. Go home.”_ _

__Lydia can’t look right at her any more. She half turns away, pulls out her cell phone, starts to compose the most pointed message to Jackson that she can. ”Lydia,” Allison says._ _

__"What?" asks Lydia, and doesn’t look up._ _

__"I think I wanted to make you jealous." Lydia has trained herself so well out of biting her lip. If she bit down right now, she’d draw blood, and Allison would smell it, and everything would go even more wrong._ _

__"We’ll discuss it when you’re sane, Allison," Lydia says tightly. "In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not at my best today, either." She jabs viciously at the ‘SEND’ key. "Jackson will meet you at the door near the cafeteria. I’ll talk to you tomorrow."_ _

__…_ _

__Danny’s new boyfriend is kind of a douchebag, and Jackson says this knowing Danny’s taste in men, but Lydia _insisted_ on making tonight a double date. So here they are. Bowling._ _

__At least he’s not sitting here with any of Lydia’s latest loser friends tonight. Bad enough that he has to put up with McCall on the lacrosse team. Apparently Stilinski has him on lockdown tonight for the _full moon_. Pathetic--but on the other hand, at least they’re not _here_._ _

__“Smile,” Lydia says with a perfect smile and gritted teeth. “We’re having fun, _remember_?”_ _

__“Elective dental surgery would be more fun than this,” Jackson says. Danny’s asshole boyfriend--Michael, maybe? Jackson hasn’t actually bothered to find out--rolls another spare._ _

__“My turn,” Lydia announces. She makes another tick mark on the score sheet, then pockets the pencil, which she’s been guarding like it’s her fucking iPhone all night. “Jackson, will you give me a hand?”_ _

__“No, I think you can handle this one,” Jackson says. He should’ve brought booze._ _

__Lydia flounces off, and Danny slides over into the seat next to him. “Are you sure this was a good idea?” Danny asks quietly, while Lydia carefully selects the most blindingly neon pink ball off the rack. “Maybe you should both take some actual time and space before you try to get back together.”_ _

__“Oh, this was a great idea,” Jackson says. Lydia’s ball wobbles off into the gutter. Pathetic. “What could be more fun on a Friday night?”_ _

__Danny eyes him sideways, then claps politely when Lydia’s second ball clips two pins. “Okay, I’m up,” Danny says, shooting Jackson one last warning look. Lydia takes his vacated seat and carefully marks down her new score on the sheet._ _

__“Two whole points,” Jackson says. “At this rate, you might make the double digits by the end of the game.”_ _

__Lydia presses her lips tightly together and does not deign to look up from the sheet. “Even if we were still having sex, we wouldn’t be tonight,” she informs him tightly. “I can’t imagine what you think a new life as a werewolf is going to get you that a sparkling new personality transplant wouldn’t accomplish even better.”_ _

__“Let me worry about that,” Jackson tells her. “You just concentrate on adding up those little numbers right. Lydia finally does look up, and for a split second Jackson thinks her eyes might flash gold._ _

__“I can’t wait for your first full moon,” she says. “If you even survive that long.”_ _

__“What is that--” Jackson starts, leaning in with a hiss, and then Danny’s back and shoving a bowling ball into Jackson’s hands, cutting him off right there._ _

__Jackson fumbles his first roll, ends up with a humiliating 5-7-10 split and only picks up one of them on his second turn. He glares daggers at Danny and maybe-Michael’s good-natured jeers, and especially Lydia’s perfectly innocent pout while she adds his score in with the pencil._ _

__“What was that supposed to mean?” Jackson demands, as soon as they’re more or less alone again. Lydia rolls her eyes._ _

__“I’ve known you since you were ten, Jackson,” she says. “I know you better than your own mother.” It’s a low, precise blow, one that only Lydia would know to direct. “I’m going to get you what you want because in return you’re going to help me keep my cover, and because if you actually do decide to take your new werewolf powers off on your own to lord it over McCall and Stilinski instead of joining the pack, I want to be able to say ‘I told you so’ when the hunters get you.”_ _

__“Maybe some of you need a pack,” Jackson says. “I don’t remember being invited to your pack when you lied to me about werewolves for four months straight.”_ _

__“Well, we’ll just have to fix that, then, won’t we?” Lydia says, so abruptly agreeable that Jackson is instantly suspicious. “Thank you for driving Allison home today.”_ _

__“I don’t have anything against _Allison_ ,” Jackson says._ _

__“Hmm,” says Lydia, and pencils in maybe-Michael’s score. “It was a pack sort of thing.”_ _

__“Whatever,” says Jackson._ _

__“Just like not hiding your own skills to make each other look good is a pack thing,” Lydia continues, then stands up briskly. “Thank you, Danny,” she adds, and plucks the fifteen-pound ball right out of his hands._ _

__Jackson sits up abruptly and watches Lydia skim the ball, with perfect, expert form, right down the middle of the lane for a textbook strike._ _

__Lydia bowls strikes every single frame for the rest of the night. Jackson comes in third._ _

__He should have brought some fucking alcohol._ _

__..._ _

__Allison squeezes her eyes shut against the moon, battering against her defenses, making her brain whisper, _hunt, kill, hunt_. It’s too loud. It’s too loud, and did Allison think that anger would help? Allison was wrong._ _

__Because Allison is so, so angry. She’s angry at almost everybody she’s ever known. She’s furious at Laura, at Laura’s memory. She wants to rip out Laura’s killer’s spine._ _

__She forces herself to breathe. Stiles suggested yoga tapes as soon as they realized Allison’s anchor was gone, made her watch them for hours on youtube, in through the nose and out through the mouth. In through the nose and out through the mouth. She smells too many things—the forest outside, all its dead leaves and rot, the dust and char and ash of the house, the dirt and the coming rain, all of it calling to the wolf. Allison drops her head and buries her nose in her sweatshirt. She doesn’t have a scarf that smells like her father this month. She smells…_ _

__Laundry detergent._ _

__It’s the cheap stuff, from out of the box, little white granules that always make her fingers feel greasy when it’s her turn to do the wash. The sweatshirt smells soapy and artificial, and a little like flowers, because apparently Stiles always brings home the unscented detergent but he accidentally grabbed the wildflower meadow-scented dryer sheets this time and everyone’s been using them, even though Stiles complains about smelling too girly for any of the girls at school to want him._ _

__He doesn’t smell girly. He smells like utterly human _boy_ , and Allison should know because she’s been sharing a bathroom with him for almost two weeks. It’s just like any other bathroom, but she’s never shared before, and it doesn’t smell like Allison’s bathroom in any home she’s ever had. It’s a little too damp and just slightly moldy, next to the sharp smell of a different brand of tile cleaner than her mother uses, the smell of water and Stiles’ soap and toothpaste and cheap teenage boy aftershave, the smell of Allison’s cheap off-brand shampoo. Allison takes another deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She tried to do her own laundry at first, but Stiles and the sheriff just added her to the rotation, and the shirt smells like the sheriff’s hands, folding clothes from the dryer on his turn last week._ _

__The claws on her hands are drawing back, and Allison isn’t ready to risk thinking about what that means, yet. She holds onto the smells, draws them close. Lydia disapproves of sweatshirts in public, but she considers them a necessary part of traditional teen girl slumber party bonding nights, and full moons count. They bought this one at the Target seventeen miles out of town while they were trying to replace the bare basics of Allison’s wardrobe for cheap without running the risk that anyone from school might see Lydia Martin at a Target. After the cheap-jeans-and-underwear run, Lydia brought them to the Macy’s sale racks for cute tops and good sports bras. The whole place had been busy, and they’d ended up trying on dresses in the same fitting room, zipping each other up the back and giggling the whole time as the clothes got more and more outrageous…_ _

__It’s working. Allison breathes in. Human. Human focus. The smell of Stiles’ aftershave all over the bathroom in the morning. The feel of Scott’s palm in hers, firm, steady, undemanding. Even the way Jackson looked at her in the car earlier, for just a second, like he _cared.__ _

__Derek’s breathing on the other side of the room right now, steady and slow, like Laura’s. Derek’s voice. _You can stay here as long as you need._ Four days of living here, and Derek’s voice telling the same stories Laura had, in the dark of night, when they could pretend that they were too human to see each other through the darkness._ _

__Lydia. Always Lydia._ _

__The way Lydia tastes._ _

__They’ve only kissed a few times, only for show, but Allison knows the taste of it, the waxy sweetness of Lydia’s lipgloss, just a hint of peppermint mocha. Allison knows it._ _

__Lydia’s fingers playing in her hair. (Aunt Kate, brushing Allison’s hair and braiding it up special when she was a kid.) Lydia’s fingers, gentle, tangling in Allison’s hair, Allison focuses on that. And the taste of the lasagna that’s the only thing the sheriff knows how to make (her mom’s chocolate-chip cookies) and the veggie burgers Stiles has made for dinner twice already, and forget the way Allison’s mom always sounded so stern and in-control, remember the sound of Jackson chewing out creepy lacrosse Matt for her. Forget her dad’s hands quick and deft, disassembling and reassembling a gun. Remember Scott’s hands on a lacrosse stick, just as real, just as sure, just as right._ _

__She breathes in the smell of this house, the smell of long-faded smoke that always clings to Derek like a second jacket, under the smell of leather and hair gel and _pack_. It is pack. It is. And Laura lied, and Laura is dead, but Laura told Allison she was strong, and the corners of this house still smell like her. The catacombs below where Allison couldn’t bear to let Derek chain her up this month, they smell like nights spent in fear and closeness and Laura and Lydia. Up here it smells like Derek, Scott’s jacket that Allison left in a corner of the room, Stiles’ laundry detergent on her hoodie._ _

___Real wolves have packs,_ Laura said, _but they don’t work the same way as ours do. A real wolf pack just means a couple of mates raising their children. It’s different for us. We’re more human. We can choose to make our own families.__ _

__Allison opens her eyes. She runs the tips of her clawless fingers over her hair-free face, and breathes in, and looks around until she meets the eyes of her packmate. Her _family.__ _

__Derek is watching her silently with careful eyes, but Allison smiles. She even mostly means it this time._ _

__"I’ve got it," she says. "I think I’ve got it."_ _

__"Good," he says. "Keep it that way."_ _

___Pack_ , Allison thinks, _family_ , and for once she’s not thinking about the people in the house she’d left behind. She’s thinking about Derek’s uncle, lone alpha, not one real beta to his name. Even Scott rejected him._ _

__"I have a plan," Allison says._ _

__…_ _

__Lydia is cranky and tired and her head hurts, which with her werewolf physiology, no amount of caffeine or Ibuprofen is going to cure. Lydia hates Allison’s plan. Hates it._ _

__If Lydia could just give Jackson all her lycanthropy, right now, just hand it over like he so desperately wants, she’d do it in a second. Yesterday Lydia had to physically pin Scott McCall to a tree to keep him from going after Jackson on sheer moon rage. She had to physically attack someone, and then she had to get close enough to Scott to smell Allison all over his collar, and not kill him herself. Lydia is so _done_ with being a werewolf._ _

__Of course, if Lydia’s not a werewolf, then Lydia doesn’t have Allison. She wouldn’t have Jackson any more, even the little relationship of hard-won familiarity and mutual blackmail they have now. And she definitely wouldn’t have Stiles or Scott or Derek, which doesn’t sound like _that much of a hardship_ at this particular moment. But she’d probably miss them._ _

__"Just this," Allison promises. "Just this, and then it’s over."_ _

__"We’re not killing anybody," Scott says firmly, then quails when the rest of them all turn to him. "We’re _not_ ,” he says. ”There’s got to be a better way.”_ _

__"You don’t have to," says Allison. "I’m an Argent. Killing werewolves is what we do, right?"_ _

__"Not this one," says Derek. "He’s my family. He killed my sister."_ _

__"Our alpha," says Allison, which might be the first good thing Lydia’s heard her say about Laura since she found out about her family._ _

__"Here’s a wacky idea, what if we concentrate on actually taking the super-powerful werewolf alpha down, first, and then fight over who gets to kill him," says Stiles._ _

__“We’re not killing him,” Scott repeats. Jackson rolls his eyes._ _

__"I can’t believe I’m saying it, but Stilinski’s actually right for once. Can we just get this over with?"_ _

__"Also, can somebody tell me why we invited him again?" Stiles demands of nobody in particular._ _

__"We’re a _pack_ ,” Allison says firmly. ”All of us. Peter Hale might have alpha powers, but he’s an omega werewolf. We’re stronger than him. If he can’t split us up or get us fighting against each other, we’re stronger.” Lydia rubs at her temples._ _

__“If he realizes we’ve go the advantage, he’s going to leave,” Derek says. “He’s insane, not stupid.”_ _

__“Not if we have him surrounded,” Allison says. “He wants a pack, right? He needs us. He’ll come to us if we howl.”_ _

__It sounds like the worst plan Lydia’s ever heard, but it’s Allison’s. Allison looks her right in the eye and smiles hopefully. Lydia smiles weakly back._ _

__"Why can’t we just make him give up the alpha power?" Lydia asks. "Laura said alphas could do that. He stays a beta, we cast him out to wander the world, he’s not our problem any more."_ _

__"So who’d be alpha?" Stiles asks. Everybody else looks like they want to object, they’re just not quite sure how. Scott’s shoulders are relaxing now that somebody’s come up with a non-fatal option. 95% of the time Scott is the most easygoing person in this pack, no matter how much Lydia wants to rip his throat out for the way he looks at Allison, but he’s stubborn enough to tear everything apart over a plot of actual murder. Damn Scott anyway._ _

__"Nobody," says Lydia. It’s a terrible plan and she hates it, but maybe that would be for the best. "No alpha, just us, just like we’ve been doing, only without crazy uncle Peter. Just us."_ _

__"If there’s no alpha, then who’s going to turn me into a werewolf?" Jackson asks, and Lydia wants to _growl.__ _

__"We will _find you another alpha_ , Jackson,” she snaps. ”Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a pair of sunglasses for this migraine while you all decide this is the best compromise we’re going to get.”_ _

__…_ _

__They forget about Gerard. They forget about a lot of things._ _

__Allison’s not wrong about pack, though. Pack saves them. Just not quite in the way they’d hoped._ _

__It’s all good and well to talk about the strength of the pack, but Stiles and Jackson are as human and breakable as they come. Lydia’s not much of a fighter, and Scott may be better, but he’s still brand new and subject to the force of Peter’s mind control in sensitive moments. This is going to be on Allison and Derek, more than anything else. It’s going to be on Allison._ _

__That’s fine. It’s her plan. She can make it work._ _

__Derek’s the one who finds the empty warehouse, god only knows how. Stiles and a super-reluctant Jackson are stationed firmly outside, ready to seal off all entrances and trap Peter inside at a moment’s notice. Lydia made them each a self-igniting Molotov cocktail, because Allison made the pleading face at her, but otherwise they’re unarmed._ _

__They could’ve found guns for the boys. If nothing else, Allison still knows how to break into her parents’ house. But a stray shot in the dark could hit anybody in the pack just as well as Peter, and even though they’d probably survive, Stiles looked more than a little queasy at the idea. And nobody wanted Jackson to be the only person with a gun._ _

__That’s why nobody’s expecting it, when the first bullet hits Derek in the shoulder._ _

__…_ _

__The fight is _chaos_. Lydia is not made for this, but she doesn’t have time to think about it, because Peter is fast like lightning, even faster than the four of them, and he gets a claw into Scott’s side and is gone before anyone can jump on him to stop him. The only thing Lydia can do is move, move, _move_ , faster than she can even think. Pure reflex reaction._ _

__And then Derek is falling, groaning, and Peter is nowhere near him, but Derek is clutching at his shoulder anyway. Lydia looks at Allison, and Allison’s looking up at the rafters, so Lydia follows her line of sight. She can’t see anything, but if Allison’s looking, there’s got to be some reason—_ _

__And then Allison gasps. It’s not a whimper, not anything as loud as a yelp, just a soft, startled _gasp_ with just a tiny edge of a squeak to it. Lydia looks down._ _

__Oh. Oh, no._ _

__Oh _hell_ no._ _

__Peter. Peter, who they’re here to fight, has one clawed hand wrapped around Allison’s throat, and another just pulling away from Allison’s stomach. Allison’s stomach, where her pale blue tank top is turning bright red._ _

__And he drops her, and he turns towards Lydia and Allison crumples, and Peter looks at Lydia and she stands there frozen. Somewhere, very nearby, Scott growls._ _

__He and Derek spring at the same time, but Scott’s still bleeding from his earlier gash, and Derek is waxen pale. Lydia’s halfway across the warehouse, she should move, she should help, but before she gets more than ten feet Peter’s flung Derek carelessly to the ground and another bullet rips out of the sky. Scott’s leg buckles underneath him. He goes down._ _

__And the enormous, monstrous thing that’s somehow Peter Hale cocks its enormous, wolfish head and bares all its fangs, and it looks at Lydia. It looks right at Lydia._ _

__"Peter!" Allison shouts. She’s struggling to her feet, pulling something from the pile of coats and hoodies they’d carelessly tossed at the base of a support column when they got here. Something small. "Catch!"_ _

__Lydia recognizes the self-igniting Molotov cocktail a moment before it slams into the concrete floor at Peter’s feet and bursts into flames._ _

__Peter rears back and roars his fury. Then a split second later he’s turning towards Allison, falling down on all fours and springing right _through_ the flames, away from Lydia, right towards Allison. Allison wobbles on her feet, and Derek and Scott are _down_ , and Lydia doesn’t think, she _runs_._ _

__There’s no getting Allison out of the way in time, there’s just Lydia, and her claws, and her teeth, and she barrels into Peter’s side moments before he reaches Allison. There’s fire racing up his his fur, the smell of singed hair all around, and this was the worst plan ever but Lydia is not letting her pack die, not now, not for anything, and not Allison _ever.__ _

__He roars and tries to turn towards her, but Lydia clings to his side, digs her claws into his hide and doesn’t let go. Digs her claws in, and ducks when he reaches around to rip her off, and moves her hand for the softest part of him he can find._ _

__Feels his throat under her fingers._ _

__This was the worst plan ever, and Peter’s jaws are inches from her face, and his claws sink into her back, trying to drag her off, and Lydia digs her claws into the soft flesh of his throat as deeply as she possibly can. Digs her claws in, and tears._ _

__She feels the pulse, low in the pit of her stomach, before she feels Peter drop to the floor under her. The fur is receding, the muzzle shrinking, and there, totally visible now against pink human skin, the gaping red gash Lydia just ripped through what used to be his throat._ _

__His eyes are wide and glassy. He’s dead. Lydia just killed a man._ _

__Lydia just killed the alpha. That means she’s…_ _

__"Oh my god," Lydia says, scrambling away. "Oh my god."_ _

__"Lydia—" Allison says, but it’s not concern, it’s a strangled cry of warning._ _

__There were two extra heartbeats in the building. From afar, Lydia had assumed they were Stiles or Jackson, and then everything got too busy to worry about now. There’s only one, now, and it’s not far any more._ _

__Lydia looks up at Allison, and there’s a gun three inches from Allison’s head._ _

__"A direct headshot from one of these should be instantly fatal even to a werewolf," Allison’s grandfather says pleasantly._ _

__“I’m your family,” Allison says shakily. Gerard puts a hand on her shoulder and moves the gun close enough to tap against her temple when she almost pulls away._ _

__“Do you think I care?” he asks._ _

__“Let her go,” Lydia says. Gerard focuses on her, blue eyes mild, smiling._ _

__“Or what, exactly?” he asks._ _

__“Or we’ll make you.” Derek sounds like he’s hauled himself to his feet somewhere behind her, and the noises mean Scott’s up, too. Lydia doesn’t dare turn around._ _

__“By my estimation, you both have about ten hours to live,” says Gerard. “Wolfsbane can be some nasty stuff.”_ _

__“Fine,” says Lydia._ _

__She ripped out Peter’s throat with her claws. That means she’s the alpha. There’s no time to think about it, and there is nobody else to do this. This is Lydia’s _pack.__ _

__This is Allison. Lydia holds herself up as tall as she can in running shoes, lets her eyes glow red, remembers Laura and tries not to think._ _

__“So what do you want?” she demands._ _

__…_ _

__“This is taking too long,” Stiles says. Jackson gives him a derisive look, and then goes back to poking at his iPhone._ _

__“What are you going to do about it?” he asks. Stiles looks at the warehouse, then at Jackson, then back again. Technically, he’s a squishy breakable human liability. But he’s a squishy breakable human liability with a molotov cocktail on hand, and the warehouse got way too quiet a couple of minutes ago, and this is going on way too long._ _

__“I’m going in,” Stiles decides. Jackson stares like he’s nuts._ _

__“Stay with the car,” Stiles says, mostly because he knows Jackson will anyway but this way he’ll have the added irritation of feeling like he’s following Stiles’ orders. “Just in case we need a quick getaway.”_ _

__They’d locked and barred the door to the loading dock to try and trap Peter in, but there’s at least one smaller door around the side of the building that they rigged to only lock from the inside. “You’re a fucking lunatic, Stilinski!” Jackson calls. Stiles cheerfully flips him off before he jogs away._ _

__Okay. Now to sneak up on the major werewolf battle without getting heard, killed, or eaten. Easy. Right?_ _

__It’s a labyrinth in this part of the building, all the support pillars and the creepy, rickety iron staircase down from the catwalk. Stiles isn’t all that sure where he’s going, especially because, thing is, it doesn’t sound like a major werewolf battle up there. It doesn’t sound like much of a battle at all._ _

__And then Stiles skirts the base of the staircase and trips over the body in the dark--human, spilling blood from what looks like a stab wound to the chest, walkie-talkie in one hand and still holding his gun--and yeah. He’s pretty sure that something very, very wrong is going on._ _

__…_ _

__Allison is fast._ _

__She’s inhumanly fast. She can outrun cars. She can move in the blur of an eye._ _

__She’s not fast enough to gut Gerard before he puts a bullet through her head. She can’t jerk her head out of the way faster than he can pull the trigger._ _

__Maybe she could. Maybe, if he were distracted, if his grip on her neck loosened, if everything fell into place, if Allison was very, very lucky. If the deep, wracking pain in her gut where Peter dug his claws in and it hasn’t healed itself or killed her yet doesn’t slow her down. If she doesn’t try to pull away from Gerard’s grip and end up falling right to her knees. Maybe she could get her claws into his gut and get herself free._ _

__Maybe, maybe not. But if it’s ‘not’, then Allison dies, right here ten feet away from Lydia, while she and Scott and Derek watch._ _

__Allison holds still._ _

__“Me? I want to live,” Gerard tells Lydia. “In my experience, werewolves have their weaknesses, but terminal cancer isn’t one of them.”_ _

__The ripple of surprise that crosses Lydia’s face is nothing compared to the stunned horror coursing through Allison._ _

__“You want the bite,” Lydia says. Allison can’t even wrap her mind about it._ _

__“You were going to kill me,” she says. “You said the only thing for an Argent to do in the face of turning into a monster was honorable suicide.”_ _

__“I’m a dying man, Allison,” Gerard says, squeezing her neck just a little tighter. “Honor is for small-minded men like your father, too weak to do what has to be done. I knew he and Victoria wouldn’t have the guts to deal with you.”_ _

__“Then what,” Allison hisses through her teeth, “was the _point_?”_ _

__“Just as I’ve been saying since I got here, Allison, I wanted to get to know you better. I wanted to get to know all of you.” He can’t gesture, not with one hand holding the gun and the other arm wrapped so tight around Allison’s neck, but Allison’s sure he raised his head to look the others dead-on. Scott flinches, Derek lifts his top lip in a snarl, and Lydia crosses her arms. “How else would I have known who to make alpha?” Now Lydia flinches. She wobbles. It’s tiny, but Allison knows her enough to see that it’s there, and Lydia wobbles. Gerard must see it too._ _

__“Fine,” Lydia says. “I bite you, you leave Allison alone and give us the wolfsbane bullets to cure Derek and Scott. Is that all you want? Fine.”_ _

__“No,” says Scott. “No, not fine, Lydia--”_ _

__“I always knew you were the quick one, Lydia,” Gerard says. “That’s why we had to make sure you were the one to kill Peter Hale. I knew you’d see my point of view.”_ _

__“Go fuck yourself,” Derek pants, and Allison can just picture Gerard’s smile._ _

__He’s too pleased with himself. Too _everything_. Lydia takes a step forward, and Allison knows._ _

__“No!” she cries out, and only just stops herself from jerking in Gerard’s grip. She’s a warrior, she’s a fighter, she’s a _hunter_ , and she’s helpless. “No, Lydia, he’s not going to settle for just being a beta or an omega. He’ll kill you as soon as you do it.”_ _

__Lydia hesitates._ _

__“I can say I’ll go looking for a different alpha to kill for that power, whether you believe me or not,” Gerard says. “Let me make this clear to you. Allison has until I count to fifteen. You love her, don’t you? Wouldn’t you trade your life for hers if you knew you had to?”_ _

__Lydia takes another step forward, and the barrel of the gun presses solid and hard, right against Allison’s head, and her grandfather would never let her go, or save Scott and Derek, not after this. If Allison dies then Gerard is out a hostage and Lydia gets away safe._ _

__“I want your word,” Lydia says. “My teeth in your arm, and Allison goes free.”_ _

__“My word,” says Gerard, “as an Argent.”_ _

__Allison makes herself relax, she has to give no warning, she just has to jump, and--_ _

__**BLAM**. The gunfire is earsplittingly loud, so close, and Allison jerks forward on pure instinct, yanking away, setting her teeth for the impact of the bullet, the second shot, **BLAM** , following right on its heels, Allison diving for the floor._ _

__It’s all a millisecond, Lydia’s shriek, the pain searing through Allison’s gut as she moves, the noise ringing through her ears. It’s over so fast that it takes Allison a moment to realize that her head is still attached, that she’s still thinking, that she’s _alive_. She has to raise a hand and feel along the side of her skull, but it’s all still there. She hasn’t died. She’s not dead._ _

__Something hits the floor, half on top of her and half behind, with a soft _whump_. Something else follows with a loud clatter._ _

__“Shit,” Stiles’ voice says weakly. Allison rolls over and raises her head to look._ _

__He’s pale, raising his hands, and standing very close. If Allison hadn’t been so mortally terrified, she’d have heard his heartbeat coming. It’s racing now._ _

__Gerard landed face-down. There’s a hole in his back, a little off-center, oozing red all over his shirt, and a second one, perfectly round, right in the back of his head._ _

__“I didn’t,” Stiles babbles, “I mean, he was going to--”_ _

__Lydia reaches a blood-streaked hand down to help Allison up. Allison takes it, tries to lever herself to her feet, gasps and almost cries at the pain in her stomach, but Lydia takes almost all of her weight on that one arm. Scott’s got Stiles, even though he can barely walk himself, and Derek looks ready to keel over, and they’re all covered in blood._ _

__And they’re alive. It’s still trying to click. And they’re alive._ _

__..._ _

__“The second shooter,” Derek says brusquely. “Gerard’s sniper. He’ll have more bullets.”_ _

__“He’s dead,” Stiles reports. “At least, if there’s not another one still wandering around too, he’s dead. That was his gun, I don’t think Grandpa Argent wanted any hunter witnesses.” He pauses. “ _Shit_ ,” he says again, with feeling._ _

__“Stiles,” Lydia says, tight and authoritative, because she’s supposed to be the authority right now and this is going to end _so help her_. “Go back to where you found him and bring back any bullets you find. We need the wolfsbane or Scott and Derek are going to die. Somebody wipe Stiles’ fingerprints off that gun.”_ _

__“We need to deal with the bodies--” Derek starts, and Stiles slips out of Lydia’s line of sight so she doesn’t have to worry about what he’s doing right now, whether he’s going to get the bullets or just go throw up in a corner, and now here’s Derek to deal with. Lydia shakes her head._ _

__“No,” she says. “No, this is not our mess, this is the hunters’ mess. They let Gerard get out of control. The only dead person here with a clawmark on him is the alpha werewolf, so why can’t we just let the humans clean up the human mess and go _home?_ ”_ _

__She’s shaking. Allison must be able to tell because she’s still holding onto Lydia’s arm to stay upright, but maybe the boys can’t. Allison sags a little more, blocks more of Lydia from view. Lydia wants to go home._ _

__“That’s not a good idea,” Derek argues, but Lydia’s not going to let him get any further this time, either._ _

__“ _Derek_ ,” she snaps, and Scott takes a hobbling step forward, into the line of fire._ _

__“Maybe it is,” he says. “You heard Gerard, Allison’s parents aren’t going to come after her directly, right? They wouldn’t. And they got what they wanted, Peter’s dead. So maybe Lydia's right. Maybe it's time for a truce."_ _

__"Good," says Lydia. "Call them, Allison."_ _

__"No." Allison pulls away, shaking her head even though she can barely stand. "No, Lydia, I can't."_ _

__"Fine!" Lydia explodes. "Let's totally ignore the fact that I'm your alpha now and you're all supposed to obey me, I'll do it! Unless you want to go out in the forest and dig three graves tonight and try to cover this whole thing up ourselves, just give me the phone."_ _

__"This was all he had," Stiles says, so apparently he ducked off where he was supposed to after all. "Hopefully some of it's what you need, because I have no idea what's what."_ _

__"Derek, take care of it," Lydia orders. "Allison, give me your cell phone, I know you still have their number."_ _

__"Lydia--"_ _

__"Now, Allison!"_ _

__Allison looks pale, scared, and betrayed. Lydia just can't right now. She can't._ _

__Chris Argent's phone number is in Allison' s contacts as _Daddy_. Lydia presses SEND viciously._ _

__It rings, two, three, four times, and maybe Chris Argent isn’t going to pick up for his daughter any more. Maybe he really is done with her. Voicemail, and Lydia stabs at the END, then REDIAL. She’ll do this as long as she has to. She can hold out longer than Chris Argent._ _

__“Lydia, maybe--” Allison tries, and then there’s a click._ _

__“Hello?” Allison’s dad’s voice is cautious, suspicious. He’s probably not supposed to still be in contact with his traitor of a little girl, is he. Well. So much for that._ _

__“Your father was a hypocrite,” spills out of Lydia’s mouth. She doesn’t sound as shaky as she feels. She sounds mean. That’s fine. Lydia wore _mean_ like an extremely expensive coat for a long time. She can do mean._ _

__“Was?” he asks carefully._ _

__“This is his mess, not ours,” says Lydia. “He wanted the bite. We didn’t kill him. We didn’t touch him. If that breaks your code, then we’ll leave Beacon Hills and you’ll never see Allison again.” Now she’s throwing wild threats--where would they even go? She could make Derek take them all to New York, wherever he and Laura lived for six years, five teenage runaways and _Derek_ as their only adult, somehow, god knows how. “I’m texting you an address, and you need to clean up your mess.”_ _

__“Lydia,” Chris Argent says, and Lydia can hear faintly in the background, how something that had been moving or rustling around or breathing suddenly stops. “Tell me if she’s okay.”_ _

__Allison’s standing right in front of her. She can hear every word. Lydia could even just reach out and hand the phone right back, if she wanted to._ _

__“She’s fine,” Lydia says. “We’re all fine. Be here within half an hour. We’ll be gone.” Then she ends the call._ _

__Allison’s just watching her, big hurt eyes and too much emotion. Lydia takes one long, shuddering breath._ _

__“Are we done?” she asks. “If nobody’s still dying from wolfsbane poisoning, we need to get out of here before the hunters show up.”_ _

__“Do we want to make it look like Gerard’s sniper survived getting stabbed in the gut long enough to drag himself out here and shoot Gerard in the back?” Stiles asks. Something about him is moving too fast, twitching. He just killed somebody._ _

___Lydia_ just killed somebody._ _

__“Yeah,” says Scott, cautious but solid. “Let’s do that, just in case. Lydia, maybe you want to get Allison out of here? We can take care of that.”_ _

__“Trying to get rid of the girls?” Allison asks, then winces again._ _

__“You just got clawed open by an alpha,” Scott says, open admiration in his tone. “You’re going to take longer to heal than the rest of us. You need to go lie down.”_ _

__“So you’re just trying to get rid of me,” says Lydia, and her voice is shaking, she’s _all_ shaking, she just wants to _leave_ and the boys are exchanging glances._ _

__“You’re about to fall down,” Derek says bluntly._ _

__“Lydia, it’s fine,” Scott promises. She _hates_ him for being so soothing. “We’ve got this.”_ _

__“Besides, Jackson’s not going to move his ass for anybody but you,” Stiles adds. “Trust me on that one.”_ _

__She wants to go. She wants to run away and never think about tonight again._ _

__Allison tugs on her arm. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”_ _

__…_ _

__Allison wipes as much of the blood off as she can with Jackson’s scarf, walks in through the back door instead of climbing in the upstairs window, and gets in the shower before Stiles comes home. It’s past 11, pitch dark outside, easy to avoid the neighbors. She’s lucky they deliberately planned this for a night when Stiles’ dad would be on shift._ _

__She hears the front door open and close over the sound of the spray, and listens carefully. Stiles drags through the kitchen, slower than normal, and up the stairs. He pauses in the hall. Allison is careful not to turn the water off until she hears the click of his bedroom door. She doesn’t want to talk to him right now. It’s too much._ _

__She wants _Laura_ , more than anyone else. Laura was for a couple of months the most comforting presence Allison knew, better than her parents, better than Kate. Laura would understand what happened tonight, and she’d pet Allison’s hair, and be alpha, and make it better._ _

__Lydia’s alpha now. Allison doesn’t even know how that’s going to work. On one hand, it makes so much sense, but on the other, she can’t even imagine it. Anyway, Allison can’t go to Lydia tonight. She’s been through more than Allison has._ _

__The hallway’s empty and quiet when Allison finally sneaks out of the bathroom, and Stiles doesn’t poke his head out or catch her on her way to her room, but Allison doesn’t want to be alone right now. She pulls on clean jeans and a t-shirt and makes sure her bloody clothes are stuffed tight in a plastic bag, hidden to be tossed out safely tomorrow. Then she goes out the window._ _

__Scott’s house is a lot closer to Stiles’ than it had been to Allison’s. She can imagine them riding their bikes back and forth all the time as kids. Allison keeps to a slow jog that doesn’t jar her mostly-healed stomach too much, sticking mostly to shadows, blending in with her dark clothes and ducking her head whenever cars pass._ _

__Scott’s mom is home, her car is in the driveway and Allison can hear her through the windows, so Allison bypasses the front door for the window of Scott’s bedroom. God only knows how he got in without explaining all the blood on his own clothes. Everybody in their pack’s gotten so good at avoiding doors._ _

__Scott’s laying face up on his bed, but the lights are on and she doesn’t think he’s asleep. Allison raps tentatively on the pane, and he jerks upright._ _

__She waits for him to slide the window open, then smiles, although tonight it feels wan and strained. “Hey,” she says. “How are you doing?”_ _

__“Leg’s all better,” says Scott, and then glances around, behind her at the night, over his own shoulder. “Do you want to come in?”_ _

__It’s warm inside Scott’s room, bright, and probably smells like him everywhere; Allison’s only been in there once, but it would probably feel familiar. Comforting, just like Scott. Scott would give her anything she asked for, and he wouldn’t push._ _

__“Actually,” Allison says, “I thought maybe you could come out?”_ _

__“Uh, yeah, sure,” Scott says. “Let me get my coat.”_ _

__They go as far as the roof. The moon’s not even a week past full, waning but still huge, bright overhead. Scott drags out a blanket so they don’t have to sit right on the cold shingles._ _

__“So,” Scott says, “what did you want to talk about?”_ _

__Allison lets herself fall back against the slope of the roof, so she’s laying at an angle, looking straight up at the moon and stars. “I don’t know,” she says. “My grandfather’s dead, my family’s a mess, some people tried to kill me today, and I tried to kill them back and failed but it doesn’t matter because they’re still dead. What are we supposed to talk about?”_ _

__“Do you _want_ to talk about that stuff?” Scott asks, because he’s more perceptive than anyone gives him credit for._ _

__“I don’t know,” says Allison. “Do you? You almost died, too.”_ _

__His hand reaches closer towards hers, comes to a rest on the blanket just an inch away. Allison moves her hand closer so their pinkies are just brushing. “We could talk about the rest of the lacrosse season instead?” Scott offers, and Allison actually laughs._ _

__“So Lydia’s alpha now,” she says instead. “That’s going to be interesting.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Scott agrees. “Can you do me a favor and tell her I’m not trying to date you and Stiles is helping me find a new anchor, so she can stop looking at me like she kind of wants me dead? She was scary enough already.”_ _

__Something catches in Allison’s throat. “She doesn’t want you dead,” Allison promises._ _

__“I know,” says Scott. “I get it.”_ _

__“She’s not actually my girlfriend, either, we’re just--” Allison is pushing herself up sitting again, and Scott’s holding a hand out, placating, and she doesn’t know what to say, and…_ _

__“I know, Allison, it’s okay,” Scott promises. “I get it. You don’t have to explain anything. She’s your best friend, I don’t want to try to get in the middle of that.”_ _

__“I don’t even know what _that_ is,” Allison admits. “Especially not now.” Lydia’s her _alpha_ now. What does that even mean for...everything?_ _

__“Don’t look at me,” Scott says. “The last girl I made out with is totally in love with her best friend.” He’s teasing. The grin proves it._ _

__Allison punches him in the shoulder, harder than she’d ever hit a human, biting back a smile. “It was the full moon!” she protests, because it’s easier than talking about the other part._ _

__“I know, that’s my point!” says Scott. “You think I have _any idea_ how this relationship stuff works? The other day Coach said I was good at being in charge, and I couldn’t look Stiles in the face for the rest of the day.”_ _

__“Wait, what?” There’s a story here. And being a werewolf means that even in the moonlight, Allison can see the slight tinge of Scott’s blush._ _

__“It’s a really long story,” he says._ _

__“ _Mmmhmm_?” Allison prompts. “I’ve got nowhere else to be.”_ _

__…_ _

__Stiles paces his bedroom, takes a shower, tries to sleep, goes down to the kitchen to make some food, eats about four bites of it, tries to sleep again, checks on Allison’s room (empty), paces around the living room, heads back upstairs to hide in his own room before his dad gets home, lays in his bed and listens for the telltale squeak of Allison’s window, and finally settles into a kind of fitful half-doze around four in the morning. Half an hour later, her jerks out of it with a start. Somebody is coming through his window._ _

__“Derek, I swear to god if that’s--” he whispers, even though the shape is too small to have any chance at being Derek. Then Lydia reaches over and flicks on the small lamp next to his window. “--you,” Stiles finishes. “Hi, Lydia.”_ _

__The last time Stiles saw Lydia, she was bloody and shell-shocked, so this is infinitely better. She’s obviously had a shower and she doesn’t look quite like she’s about to burst into tears at this exact moment. She’s got that classic Lydia look of thin-lipped determination, but she’s probably not shaking. That’s probably Stiles’ eyeballs, from the total lack of sleep._ _

__“Were you actually sleeping?” she asks. Stiles shakes his head._ _

__“No. Not for a while,” he admits. “So hey, what’s up? 4 AM meeting of the brand new ‘I just killed somebody tonight’ club?” She doesn’t even flinch. Stiles wonders if she even heard him._ _

__“I owe you,” says Lydia, almost a whisper. “You saved my life.”_ _

__Stiles swallows. There they are, the images he’s been trying to avoid all night. The feeling of the gun’s grip in his hand. “Technically, I think I saved Allison’s life,” he says, and that memory is terrifying enough, realizing that if he didn’t sneak in quietly enough, one twitch from Gerard would splatter Allison all over the concrete floor._ _

__“He would’ve killed me as soon as he got what he wanted,” Lydia insists. “You saved me.”_ _

__Stiles is still mostly laying down, he realizes, propped up on one elbow and awkwardly half-covered by his quilt. He scrambles awkwardly to his feet, which at least makes this little tableau _slightly_ more normal._ _

__“So I wanted to check on you,” Lydia continues. “To see how you were.”_ _

__“Um.” Stiles glances down. He’s wearing his dad’s oldest sweatshirt and a pair of blue plaid boxers that, god willing, don’t have any obvious holes in them. “I’m fine. I guess.”_ _

__“And,” Lydia takes a step forward, closing up the distance between the, not even glancing down at his underwear, “I wanted to thank you.”_ _

__Stiles doesn’t even have time to wonder what the hell is happening before Lydia’s lips are on his, her arms going around the back of his neck to tug him down, and everything is very, very strange. It only lasts a few seconds. Stiles blinks._ _

__“Wow,” he says. “I mean, wow, and also, why?”_ _

__“I told you,” says Lydia, her fingers soft on his cheek. And Stiles must be shaking, because that can’t be her, right? “I wanted to thank you.” Before he can muster an argument or figure out if he wants to, or think more than _Allison is right in the other room_ , she’s kissing him again, and it’s...wow. Lydia Martin is in his bedroom, slipping him tongue. Just. _Wow.__ _

__There’s a funny kind of metallic taste in her mouth that Stiles can’t quite place, and isn’t even sure why he’s wasting brain trying, until... “Lydia,” he says, pulling back just a little. “Why do you taste like blood?”_ _

__“I bit Jackson,” she says, like it’s nothing. “It doesn’t matter, don’t--”_ _

__Stiles doesn’t mean to take half a step back, but a moment later he realizes there’s a foot of space between them that wasn’t there before, and Lydia looking at him, a little betrayed. “Oh,” he says. “Wait, are you here to...”_ _

__“Do you want me to?” Lydia asks._ _

__“Um.” Wow, that is a big decision to be making at 4:30 in the morning. Speed and strength and healing! A lifetime tied to the full moon! And also to Lydia, which doesn’t sound that bad, except that he never knows what’s going on in her head and Stiles really isn’t too clear on all the ins and outs of the alpha-beta relationship anyway, but he’s not sure he likes it._ _

__“I owe you, if it’s really what you want,” Lydia says, and steps up to circle her arms around the back of his neck again, which stops his runaway train of thought right in its tracks._ _

__“I need you,” says Lydia. “Just like I need Derek and Jackson and Scott--”_ _

__“And Allison?” Stiles finishes._ _

__“Yes,” says Lydia. “This is it. I didn’t ask to be this, but here I am.” She blinks, and Stiles jerks back, stopped by her arms around her neck; her eyes are bright red. “I’m your alpha. So are you going to be mine?”_ _

__“Do I have to be a werewolf for that?” Stiles breathes. He’s standing there in his boxers and Lydia Martin is half an inch away from him, and the red eyes are slightly terrifying but it’s a little hard, in this context, to tell the difference between _terrifying_ and _arousing_. Stiles is ready to do whatever she wants if she’ll just kiss him again, putting aside all the little voices in the back of his head screaming that this is definitely _not_ typical Lydia behavior and it's not how tonight is supposed to be going. _Tonight_ isn’t how tonight is supposed to be going. Lydia Martin just kissed him. That's got to be good._ _

__“You don’t have to be,” Lydia says. She tugs him closer, her lips just grazing his ear. “Just promise me you’ll stay mine.”_ _

__“Lydia, I--”_ _

__“What are you doing?”_ _

__Stiles makes a flailing, jerky attempt not to fall on his ass. Allison’s standing at his bedroom door._ _

__Allison. Who lives here. Who is kind of at least fake-dating Lydia. Who is utterly terrifying, and who Stiles actually really cares about, and whose life Stiles saved not twelve hours ago by killing a man in cold blood._ _

__Allison’s voice is flat, and really calm, which means she’s pissed as hell and shit, Lydia’s still got her hands around Stiles’ neck and if she steps away, then Allison’s going to be able to see the latest developments in Stiles’ boxers situation, which Lydia’s definitely already figured out for herself. If Allison can’t already smell it. Oh god, Stiles is going to die in his bed._ _

__“Nothing,” says Lydia. She lets go and steps back with absolutely no regard for Stiles’ modesty, primly straightening her clothes into place. “I was just checking on Stiles.”_ _

__“Lydia,” Allison says, and _shit_ she sounds tired, and about a million other things that Stiles is way too tired and sort of still turned on and also generally not even a little bit good enough at people to name. “Just let him sleep and come to my room before we wake up the sheriff.”_ _

__Stiles can’t even deal with the lost expression on Lydia’s face. He can’t stop thinking about Gerard Argent, and Lydia did that to Peter Hale with her own fingernails. It’s probably way too much to hope for a little sex to take both of their minds off of it that won’t make them both feel worse in the morning._ _

__Especially with Allison right on the other side of the wall. Stiles sits down on the edge of his bed._ _

__“Fine,” says Lydia. “You were next on my list, anyway.”_ _

__Allison’s eyes flick over to Stiles for just a second. “Text Scott if you can’t sleep,” she instructs. “He’s probably still up.”_ _

__“Yeah, great,” Stiles grumbles. “I’ll do that.”_ _

__Stiles’ cell phone is probably still in his jeans pocket, half-under his bed. He should get that out._ _

__Allison shuts his bedroom door behind them._ _

__…_ _

__Allison’s angry. Fine. Fine, she’s angry. Of course she is. It’s not like Lydia hadn’t known, from the moment she slipped through Stiles’ window, that Allison was home, and awake, and could hear every word--_ _

__“Were you really going to sleep with him?” Allison asks abruptly, as soon as her bedroom door is closed._ _

__“Why?” Lydia asks, so she doesn't have to admit she doesn't know the answer. “Does it matter?”_ _

__“Did you have sex with Jackson?” Allison asks, instead of answering._ _

__“No, for your information, I didn’t,” Lydia says tightly._ _

__She would have, three months ago, because sex made Jackson _hers_ and she needs him to know tonight just exactly who he belongs to. She bit him to make him hers. He _knew it_ , she kissed him and made him choke out her name before she sank her fangs into his side, Lydia’s his alpha and she _owns him_ , but she didn’t have sex with him to prove it because--_ _

__Because Lydia doesn’t want to be his any more. And she needs to own Stiles every bit as much as she owns Jackson, but she doesn’t want to be his, either._ _

__She hasn’t even started thinking about Derek and Scott. Lydia has no idea how she’s going to pull this off._ _

__She sits down on the edge of Allison’s bed. It’s impossible to miss Scott’s jacket, hanging neatly off the back of Allison’s chair. God, she’s so tired she wants to cry. She’s so _everything_ , she just wants to cry._ _

__“Why Stiles?” Allison asks. “What’s so important that you had to come and see Stiles at 4:00 in the morning?”_ _

__“I need him,” Lydia says, looking at her hands._ _

__“You need him?” Allison asks. “Why him?”_ _

__“He killed Gerard,” says Lydia. It’s not a bond she ever expected to share with anyone, let alone with _Stiles Stilinski_ , looking at a corpse lying on the floor and knowing that you just-- “I need that.”_ _

__“Oh.” Allison takes a step back, and her shoulders fall. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have--”_ _

__“Not like that,” Lydia snaps. If Allison doesn’t get it, then there’s _nobody_ , unless she wants to try to take comfort in Derek fucking Hale, of all people. “We need him. He’s willing and able to pick up a gun that doesn’t belong to him and shoot a man dead center in the back of the head, and I don’t have to _like_ it, but we _need_ that.”_ _

__“Lydia, what are you talking about?” Allison steps closer, and Lydia looks out the window, where the moon is already set and the birds are already thinking it might be close to morning._ _

__“There are six of us,” she says. “Derek is going to be our muscle. Jackson is vicious, physically capable, easy to manipulate, and rich, and we need all of that.” Her voice is getting quicker, higher as she goes, but Lydia keeps going because these are the _plans_ , this is how things have to happen now, Allison has to _know_. “Scott is going to be second-in-command, because nobody else in the pack actually trusts anybody else as much as Scott, including me, so next time there’s a crisis they’ll actually listen if he has to give orders.”_ _

__“Lydia…”_ _

__“Stiles has to fit into that,” Lydia continues right over her. “He’s smart, he’s loyal, he’s the only one of us who’s not susceptible to wolfsbane.”_ _

__“Have you even been home?” Allison asks._ _

__“I changed clothes,” Lydia says, which should be obvious. She couldn’t stay there, though._ _

__“Lydia, it’s okay.” The mattress sinks down under Allison’s weight next to her. “We’re going to be fine.”_ _

__“Of course we are,” Lydia says. “I’m in charge now. It’s all going to be perfect. Our pack is now a Lydia Martin special. We’ll be exquisite.”_ _

__“Lydia,” Allison says, and then her arms are wrapping around Lydia’s shoulders, tugging Lydia sideways, into her, and Lydia goes more easily than she would for anybody else on the planet. Even her mother. Even Laura. Oh god, Lydia’s got to be Laura now, this _isn’t her job_ , how is she supposed to--_ _

__“It’s okay,” says Allison, “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”_ _

__“I didn’t mean to,” Lydia whispers into Allison’s shoulder, and her fingers are clutching so hard into Allison’s shirt it’s going to ruin the fabric, “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t,” but she _did_ , she _had_ , and that makes it even worse._ _

__“He deserved it,” Allison says. “He was bad, he was twisted, he was going to kill you, or me, or--”_ _

__“Nobody gets to kill you,” Lydia says fiercely, still buried in the hug she never wants to leave. “Nobody, not Peter Hale, not Gerard, nobody. You’re _mine_.”_ _

__“Like the boys are yours?” Allison asks, and Lydia lifts her head at the dry, tired tone of voice._ _

__“Please don’t,” Lydia asks. “Please don’t make me have this conversation tonight.”_ _

__“Okay, but we have to have it,” Allison says. “I’m _yours_ , Lydia. Even if you weren’t my alpha, you’re my best friend. You’re the most important person in the world. You have to know that.” She holds Lydia a little closer, and Lydia lets her, or else Lydia’s the one tightening her arms. “I’m always going to be yours. I just want to know if you’re mine.”_ _

__“That’s a stupid question,” Lydia sniffles._ _

__“Not if I don’t know the answer,” Allison points out._ _

__“Well, you should,” bites Lydia. “Of course I am. You’re the only person who I’d ever let see me like this.”_ _

__“Good,” says Allison. “Good, because I’m keeping you. You don’t get to go anywhere.”_ _

__Allison’s lost even more than Lydia. And it’s her _job_ to be strong, but her grip is almost tight enough to hurt, and she means it, the ‘not going anywhere’. Means it so hard it’s almost scary. Especially because Lydia might mean it back._ _

__“Jealous?” Lydia asks. It’s meant to be a tease, like it has been these past weeks, but it doesn’t come out as one._ _

__“I don’t want you to kiss Jackson, or Stiles, or anybody else,” Allison says. “I want you to kiss me.”_ _

__Lydia doesn’t _care_ about Jackson, or Stiles, or anybody else. She probably used to. She needs to. She’s alpha now, and earlier tonight there was so much blood, and she needs them, Lydia _needs_ them, but right now she’s with Allison and she doesn’t ever want to need anybody else again._ _

__“Fine,” says Lydia. “Okay, fine. We’ll do that.”_ _

__It should be bigger than this. There’s supposed to be some kind of big romance movie climax where they fall into each other’s arms and all the things keeping them apart fade away, but right now it’s so late, and Lydia is so tired, that she can’t remember any of the things keeping them apart in the first place. Maybe it was just that neither of them had said it yet. And now they have. And it’s still 4:30 in the morning, and she’s still so, so tired, and she came so close to watching Allison die tonight, and she killed Peter Hale with her own claws._ _

__It’s not fair. Lydia wanted a romance movie ending._ _

__“In the morning,” Lydia says, “you have to take me out to brunch and say it again.”_ _

__“Okay,” says Allison. She’s petting Lydia’s hair, one stroke after another, just running her fingertips through it as she goes. “But you have to stay here tonight. You can’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone.”_ _

__“I won’t,” Lydia promises. “I’ll stay.”_ _

__…_ _

__They end up in Allison’s t-shirts and sweatpants, Lydia drowning in them, sharing one pillow and feet tangled together under the covers. Allison can’t stop touching Lydia’s hair._ _

__“I don’t think I can sleep,” Lydia whispers into the dark that they’re both pretending is really dark. It’s closing in on 5 AM by now, and they’ve both got werewolf sight. If they close their eyes, they can ignore it._ _

__“Then just kiss me,” Allison says._ _

__They’ll figure the rest of it out, what everything _means_ , how the new pack is going to work, tomorrow. But this is simple, this is Lydia’s lips opening under Allison’s like they were always meant to fit, and their tongues sliding together so slow, Allison’s fingers buried in Lydia’s hair and holding her close, their ankles hooked together and their breasts brushing, shooting a little tingle down to the pit of Allison’s belly to simmer on low. They don’t need to go any farther tonight than this. They don’t need to _think_ about anything tonight, besides this._ _

__Lydia curls her arm around Allison’s waist, presses her body in close and tight. They can do this. They can do this until dawn._ _

__…_ _

__EPILOGUE:_ _

__

__“Really, Stiles?” The sheriff’s voice is weary. “Really?”_ _

__“He’s not going for it.” Lydia lets go of Allison’s hand briefly to reach for the thermos of hot cocoa sitting between them on the roof tiles._ _

__“He will,” Allison assures her girlfriend. “Trust me, Stiles has his ways.”_ _

__“I’m just saying, we _have_ the spare room--” Stiles argues, two stories below them. Allison’s got a pretty good reference for his facial expression by now. She grins a little at the image._ _

__“So how was today?” Lydia asks, very delicately. Allison’s smile fades._ _

__“It was fine,” Allison says. “They haven’t put a lock on my window, they haven’t tried to kill me in my sleep, and my dad said three times he was glad I was home.”_ _

__“Stiles, we’re not turning this house into a hostel for the disenfranchised LGBT youth of Beacon Hills,” the sheriff says tiredly._ _

__“Well, maybe we should,” Stiles argues. “Maybe the disenfranchised LGBT youth of Beacon Hills need a place to go. What are you doing in your capacity as sheriff to help the disenfranchised LGBT youth of Beacon Hills, huh?”_ _

__“Stiles…” the sheriff sighs. “You know I love and support you no matter what, right?”_ _

__“You know I don’t like you living back there,” Lydia says. “I’m not going to order you, but you can always stay here, or with me, or--”_ _

__“It’s okay,” Allison promises, more because she _wants_ it to be than because she’s really sure. “I think Mom’s trying to find a cure.”_ _

__Lydia huffs a derisive little breath. “Make sure you mention that to the sheriff next time he checks up on you,” she says. “Just leave out the lycanthropy part. Maybe he’ll feel protective enough to help us out.”_ _

__“Dad, this isn’t about me, this is about Isaac,” Stiles is explaining. “Isaac, who needs a safe place to stay.”_ _

__“Do the words _mandated reporter_ mean anything at all to you?” the sheriff asks._ _

__“He’ll help,” Allison promises. She already misses her little spare bedroom in the Stilinski house, where she had pack just down the hall and the only firearms were always locked up carefully in the sheriff’s gun safe. It’s nice to be home. It’s good. She missed her parents. It’s good that, with Gerard dead, they’re willing to talk to her again. “Can Isaac keep up the cover?”_ _

__“What, that his father’s a raging yet largely harmless homophobe and _not_ very nearly the second person I’ve ever killed for what he did to one of my betas?” Lydia asks lightly. “You haven’t spent enough time with him. That boy’s been so repressed, now that he's finally letting go _Greenberg_ probably looks good to him. Boys in general are no problem at all. He’ll be a better sad little baby gay than you were.”_ _

__“Are werewolf packs supposed to be this queer?” Allison asks rhetorically._ _

__“Oh, we’re not that bad,” Lydia scoffs. Allison raises her eyebrows, and, when Lydia raises hers right back, leans over to kiss her girlfriend soundly on the lips._ _

__“Where’s Isaac staying now?” the sheriff asks._ _

__“With a friend,” Stiles hedges._ _

__“An adult friend?” the sheriff asks._ _

__“Maybe,” says Stiles._ _

__“The same ‘friend’ Allison stayed with for a few days before she got here?” the sheriff asks._ _

__“...let’s say yes,” says Stiles._ _

__“The same adult friend and former murder suspect--”_ _

__“Acquitted murder suspect!” Stiles protests. “And he’s been a really great, um, group mentor for us.”_ _

__“Stiles, have we talked about how your choices of friends has started to seriously worry me lately?”_ _

__“Hey, _you_ said you loved and supported me no matter what.”_ _

__“You do realize that Scott and Stiles are about one more full moon away from ending up in a supply closet together?” Allison points out lightly._ _

__“Hmm,” Lydia says, and glances up at the moon, just three or four days until full. “Well, there’s still Jackson.”_ _

__“We should set him up with Isaac,” Allison teases, and Lydia rolls her eyes._ _

__“Please, do you know how much work it’s been to keep those two from killing each other already?” she says. “I’ll find a nice girl who isn’t afraid to give Jackson the beat-down he needs, and turn her for him.”_ _

__“Are we that happy couple who keep trying to set all our friends up?” Allison asks._ _

__“Excuse me, I’m a good alpha who wants her pack members to be happy,” Lydia corrects. “And I’d _rather_ be that happy couple who’s enjoying their romantic moonlit date.”_ _

__“On the roof of our friend’s house, while we eavesdrop to make sure Isaac’s going to have a place to live,” Allison clarifies, and Lydia rolls her eyes again._ _

__“Fine, be that way,” she says._ _

__“What I’m saying is, Isaac needs to live _here_ instead of _there_.”_ _

__“And not with his own father,” the sheriff says. It’s a statement and a question and an implication, all wrapped up in one._ _

__“I swear to god, you will not find a single bruise on him,” Stiles says, suddenly dead serious, and everyone in the pack knows what 'mandated reporter' means. They’re playing with so much fire here. Allison hasn’t spent much time with Isaac since Derek brought him to Lydia like a proud cat carrying a half-dead mouse. She doesn’t know how to tell him that she hates basements, too._ _

__“No,” says Allison, “you’re right.” She rolls up on her hip, and Lydia cocks an eyebrow, challenging, waiting, so Allison rolls the rest of the way over, covering Lydia’s body with her own, pushing up just far enough on her hands and knees that they’re not, quite, touching._ _

__“Now, this is more like it,” Lydia purrs. “What are you going to do with me?”_ _

__“I don’t care what Scott said, I _do not_ have a crush on Derek Hale!” Stiles yelps. Lydia and Allison both freeze, looking at each other._ _

__A second later, they dissolve into giggles._ _

__“Oh my god,” Allison says. “We have the weirdest dates.”_ _

__“Werewolves,” Lydia points out. “And this doesn’t qualify as a date until I have a hickey.”_ _

__“You have werewolf healing,” Allison points out. Lydia’s left marks on her already, red-purple bruises along the base of her collarbone that spark something Allison can’t look at too closely when she presses her fingers against them later. Lydia’s _packmate_ and _lover_ and now also _alpha_ , and sometimes, Allison feels so very _owned_. Sometimes, she admits she really likes that feeling._ _

__“Try harder,” Lydia suggests with a smirk. “Maybe I’ll keep them for you.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [c_is_for_circinate](http://c-is-for-circinate.tumblr.com/)


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